


Freaks: A Story of Mysteries

by BossTigger



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Action/Adventure, Comedy, Horror, Multi, Mystery, Romance, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2019-10-27 19:28:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17772839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BossTigger/pseuds/BossTigger
Summary: Four years have gone by since Weirdmageddon, and three since Dipper and Mabel have been to Gravity Falls. With high school behind them, the twins return to the Falls not for the summer, but forever. What awaits them in the deceptively peaceful town are new mysteries, redefined relationships, unexpected enemies, new faces, and grave threats in a relentlessly changing world.





	1. Road Rage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After years away from home, Dipper and Mabel are on their way back to their new home. However, they have to get gas.

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is property of the Walt Disney Corporation, and hopefully Alex Hirsch. Support the official release. Seriously, do not fuck with them. They will end you. There’s some other stuff that doesn’t belong to me in there, support them as well, if you want to, but don’t fuck around with Disney. Don’t.  
  
**Freaks: A Story of Mysteries  
A Gravity Falls Story**  
  


**|The Long Road Home|**

  
It had been four years almost to the day that Dipper and Mabel Pines had stepped off the bus to a seemingly sleepy and boring town called Gravity Falls, Oregon. They were the first footsteps into a summer that would pretty much define the lives of the twins and nearly everyone in the town itself. It wasn’t an adventure, but a summer of adventures, where unlikely heroes, unusual villains, and incomprehensible forces met and dueled on fields from the mundane to the metaphysical all the way up to a world-shaking climax.  
  
After such a thrilling summer, nothing really came close. It wasn’t like life lost its spark; they returned to Piedmont, California and the normal world they saved from complete destruction with little angst. In fact, what really came from that adventure was a bond between them as unshakeable as Dipper’s will and Mabel’s optimism.  
  
In the years since that adventure, the two were inseparable. Everything the could do together they did, and even though they only returned for a second summer at Gravity Falls, it didn’t stop them from going on their own adventures for the summers after. From British Columbia, to Baja California, from the Fourth of July Fireworks in New York Harbor to Rocket launches in Florida, and even some places that were more their speed, the twins embraced the spirit of adventure and set out to really see the world they saved.  
  
Still, they both wanted nothing more than to return to that mysterious and terrible place that made them who they really were, and after weathering disappointment, finding determination, and displaying responsibility and maturity beyond their years, they were on their way to the Falls… to their home from now on.  
  
“Dipper here, and this is Road to the Falls entry number… onetwothree… uhh... four? Yeah, four. Entry number four: We crossed into Oregon an hour ago, but we still have a little while to go,” Dipper Pines whispered quietly into the dashboard mounted camera that was pointed at his face.  
  
In the darkness of the car, barely lit by the console of the car, his face was easy to make out. Dipper’s was the face of a young man approaching his late teens, but had the sense to take care of himself.  
  
“Mabel’s been sleeping since we switched at the state line,” Dipper continued, as he kept his eyes on the road, “She’s not snoring, thank goodness, but every so often-”  
  
“Mm… I am a God of Destruction… maaah…” The sleepy voice of his twin sister Mabel rose from the dark.  
  
“Yeah, that,” Dipper finished, before adding, “I’ll take it over her sounding like a brick in a washer that got sucked into a jet engine, though.”  
  
Dipper kept his attention on the road, but spared the camera a quick glance upon confirming the road ahead was well clear. “For the first time since that summer, we’re coming back.”  
  
He let out a small, wistful sigh as he narrated to the camera as much to himself. “We’re on our way to our new home, the Mystery Shack. Soos and Melody have already prepared our old room in the attic, and agreed to hire us on to work there so we can add to the money we’ve been saving up through high school.”  
  
An orange glow joined the dim blue given off by the radio and the green shine from the dashboard. Dipper let out a sigh but continued on with his narration. “Speaking of: Soos has taken over the Mystery Shack completely and runs it with his wife Melody. They’re expecting their first child by the end of the summer, and  _I’m_  gonna get to be the godfather. I get middle name rights, but Mabel gets firsties because she’s older.”  
  
“Xyler… or Craz… or maybe Xycraz… Crazxyler… yeah…”  
  
Dipper knew that Mabel hadn’t decided on a name yet, so he was going to make sure his future godson had a good, cool middle name– **Tyrone.**  To his video blog, he continued explaining the situation of the Falls since their last visit. “Our Great Uncles, the Stans, they’ve been gone for years now, on a trek through Africa and Asia in search of anomalies in remote places. They send a letter or two or pop up back in Gravity Falls every so often, so we know they haven’t been devoured by some horror. Their traveling was the reason though we couldn’t go back until now.”  
  
“Wouldn’t let us stay with Soos… ” Mabel murmured in her sleep.  
  
He glanced at Mabel again. “Our graduation ceremony was still letting out and the ink on the emancipation papers wasn’t dry before we were on the road. No more are we going to need permission or chaperones; Mabel and I… we’re out in the world on our own. If I timed our departure right, we’ll pull into Gravity Falls right at sunrise for her to wake up to. And once we settle in, we’re never leaving… aside from vacations, adventures, family functions, apocalypses, and combinations thereof.”  
  
He then added with a huff. “Though we’ll need to stop for gas because Mabel’s a leadfoot.”  
  
“You’re a leadfoot,” Mabel mumbled in her sleep.  
  
Dipper rolled his eyes. “Are you even asleep?”  
  
“I’ve been awake since ‘brick in a washing machine in a jet engine,’” Mabel informed him.  
  
She reached for the camera, and turned it to her, much like Dipper she’d grown up well–with a clear and pretty face framed by a hairstyle that refused to change. She also had long gotten past her braces, which she showed off with her devious smile.  
  
“And Dipper sounds like a man dying from ebola when he snores, so enjoy that  _ladies,”_  Mabel revealed.  
  
“Why I oughta…”  
  
“Oh what are you gonna do, brake check me?” Mabel taunted.  
  
“Maybe when I’m not hauling an 800 pound trailer?” Dipper replied.  
  
“Good point, even as cool as it is,” Mabel said.  
  
The car was weird, it was a 2005 Subaru Outback modified by Old Man McGucket and delivered to them on their last birthday, and it could easily hit 145 even with the aforementioned trailer. Mabel proved that just before they reached the Oregon border.  
  
He looked at the dashboard again. “Speaking of, we gotta get gas or we’re going to be pushing all of it uphill for until we find a station.”  
  
Mabel quickly pulled out a folded up map and unfurled it across her half of the dashboard. “Let’s see… oh! Oh! There’s a motorcycle bar just up the road, they have their own pumps!”  
  
Dipper frowned. “A biker bar? Are there any others around?”  
  
“Not for another six miles… uphill,” Mabel answered.  
  
Dipper sighed in resignation. “Biker bar it is. At least they’ll have premium.”  
  
Mabel brightened. “And bikers, and maybe even karaoke! And karaoke singing bikers!”  
  
Dipper gave her a look… and nodded. “If they do, we’re getting that on camera.”  
  
“Yes!” Mabel said, and shared a high five with her brother.  
  


**|One Percent|**

  
Hauling behind it a four-wheeled vented trailer, Dipper and Mabel’s blue on gray all-wheel drive station wagon pulled off the road and came to a stop in front of the gas pumps beside a tavern whose clientele were pretty obvious–given the row of motorcycles lined up in front of the building. Throwing the car into park and turning it off, Dipper looked around and saw that the only other four-wheeled vehicle was a recently made silver colored jeep parked on the far end of the row of bikes.  
  
“Heh, I guess this is really a biker dive, huh?” Dipper said nervously when he saw men wearing leather biker kuttes, jeans, and jackets looking menacing around the entrance. He was starting to have second thoughts about coming here.  
  
Hearing muffled tunes from within, Mabel perked up. “I hear music, and it’s live! I’m going in!”  
  
She immediately went for the camera and yanked it off the dashboard. “Fingers crossed for biker karaoke!”  
  
“Mabel-!” He called after her, but she was already bouncing out of the passenger side and heading for the entrance. He heaved a sigh, and climbed out of the car to go to the pump.  
  
The twins had grown tall, much like their Great Uncles, both clearing 6 feet with ease. Taking up self-defense courses and his summers of adventure had built Dipper into a lean and wiry-framed young man who was better looking than he humbly argued, whereas Mabel blossomed into the head-turning and voluptuous young woman she always knew she’d be. Puberty had been generous to both of them, which is kind of why Dipper regarded his sister’s eager rushing off with no small amount of dread.  
  
He only barely closed the door, when he found a short, grizzled old man in grimey blue overalls glaring up at him with one wide open but glassy eye. He recoiled a bit, having not seen the old guy move to intercept him at the pump. Nervously, he looked the man over for nametag on his overalls, but found half of one that began as “BLURN” with the rest torn away.  
  
“Uh…?” Dipper began slowly before speaking carefully. “Can I…? Help… you…?”  
  
“Yer nahwt frawum around these here parts, are ya?” “BLURN” asked in a raspy voice that invoked the image of Dr. McGucket and Popeye the Sailor speaking at the same time. “Self service is nahwt done allowed here.”  
  
Dipper briefly searched his memory if that was true. Yeah, Oregon didn’t allow self-service, which he thought was weird–which also meant he would have to tip at gas stations from now on. He wondered how Grunkle Stan managed to avoid doing that.  
  
“How much y'all nee, Califawnia boy?” “BLURN” asked, jarring Dipper from his analysis before he could overanalyze.  
  
“Huh, what? Oh… um... forty dollars worth.“ Dipper searched his pocket for his wallet. “Do you take credit-”  
  
“CASH ONLY! Go inside to th’ ATM,” “BLURN” cut him off, causing Dipper to jump in place.  
  
“R-right,” he quickly agreed and scurried off, lest the old man pulled out a sawed-off shotgun or a can of spinach in anger.  
  
_“Geez, intense as all heck,”_  Dipper thought as he reached the door, finding five bikers who were all easily more intimidating than “BLURN” smiling and chuckling to each other about something… at least until he walked up. They turned and stared at him, their mirthful expressions fading to cocky sneers or outright glares at Dipper as he passed them.  
  
_“Well, I guess he’d need to be,”_  he added inwardly as he pushed open the heavy steel door and was blasted in the face with heat, smoke, and the smell of booze.  
  
This was indeed a biker bar, the floor was a hard stone, sticky with spilled beer and bits of broken glass and grime from the gravel outside. On the walls, adorned with bike parts, road signs and other biker memorabilia. At the crowded bar to his left, men and women were gathered, all wearing the same biker kuttes smoking, drinking, and generally having a good time. In front of him, in a larger space of the club, three pool tables were lined up, each with games going on.  
  
Beyond the last pool table in the left hand corner was a stage where a few guys with instruments were performing anemic covers of 80s metal hits. Spotting Mabel among the blacks and blues was easy, with her colorful yellow and pink sweater and bright pink hair band glaringly obvious.  
  
“That’s not karaoke, it’s just a cover band,” Mabel said as he reached her.  
  
She looked back at him, on the verge of tears at the horrible quality of music.  _“A bad Van Halen cover band.”_  
  
“The world can’t always be a place of joy and wonder,” Dipper lamented when he reached her. He looked around. “This place is cash only, did you see an ATM?”  
  
Mabel quickly pointed to the right side corner, just past the third pool table, where a particularly tough looking group of bikers were playing pool. “Over there, and be careful.”  
  
“Tell me about it, I think I’ve been given the stink-eye the whole time I’ve been here,” Dipper muttered.  
  
“Obviously because you’re with me, and… you look like the whitest boy ever,” Mabel said, pointing out his decidedly un biker-like attire of knee-length tan shorts and a red polo shirt, and the lumberjack hat he traded with Wendy when he was last here.  
  
Dipper rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Wait here, and don’t take anything from anyone.”  
  
“Not even compliments?” Mabel asked after him.  
  
“Especially not compliments!” Dipper called back.  
  
“Okay!” Mabel said with a casual two-finger salute. She turned and made a beeline to the nearest empty table across from the bar, sat down, and rolled up her sleeve before setting her elbow down with her armed raised.  
  
“All right,” she called, “Who wants to arm-wrassle?! I’m takin’ all comers! Bragging rights only!”  
  
A line of bikers formed right up to the empty seat at the table.  
  
Glancing back Mabel’s way for a second, Dipper realized what Mabel was doing and breathed out a chuckle. He, Wendy, Soos, Grenda, the Stans, and even Chutzpar couldn’t beat Mabel in arm-wrestling, and that was when she was  _twelve_ –it’s like she found the ancient secret for it and used it to terrifying effect despite being as limp a noodle as he was back then.  
  
Her calling for an arm-wrestling challenge took some of the heat off him too, as he made his way around the pool tables to the ATM, and–after checking for a skimmer because he thinks about these things–he ran his card through it.  
  
As he began to punch the sticky keys of a clearly outdated machine that lagged well behind his inputs, one of the bikers over at the pool table quickly took notice of him. An average height, very light-brown skinned young woman in her mid twenties with dark brown hair cut in a short bob except for a pair of tresses that ran down the sides of her head down to her collarbone, she was dressed in tight jeans and a jacket with a kutte over it bearing the name of “The River Road Spellriders” in addition to several other patches including USMC and Veteran patches.  
  
Watching Dipper start to struggle with the machine’s slowness, she let her brown-eyed gaze wander over his tall, athletic form and decided that she liked what she saw. She looked over to a taller and larger biker who fit the stereotype of big muscles, horseshoe mustache, and American Flag bandanna and offered her pool cue to him.  
  
“Hey look at that,” she said to him. “You see that?”  
  
When he looked and saw the kid clearly out of his depth in a place like this, he grinned viciously. “Yeah?”  
  
“I want it.”  
  
Her large companion chuckled and took her pool cue. “Go get it.”  
  
In front of the ATM, Dipper finished hitting enough commands to withdraw forty dollars, and sighed as the machine began its painfully slow processing. This ATM had to be older than he was.  
  
“Come on, can we get out of here before I get shivved or something?” He asked the machine as it the flashing box on the screen informed him again that it was processing.  
  
“Oh, no one’s gonna shiv you tonight, twinkie,” a sharp but friendly voice called from behind, making him jump.  
  
“Bwah!” He yelped before he turned around and found the pretty biker chick sizing him up. “Oh uh… hello?”  
  
“Hello yourself,” she said, “You don’t need to worry about any trouble long as I’m around.”  
  
The machine finally spat out the money Dipper requested, and with a bit of haste he quickly pocketed it. He gave her a friendly, nervous smile. “You sure? You snuck up on me pretty good.”  
  
The biker girl’s lips curled up into a devious one. “If I wanted trouble, you wouldn’t have seen me coming.”  
  
She hooked a thumb towards the bar, which was a little emptier now thanks to the line of guys who were starting to lose to Mabel–given the slams of arms hitting wood and the yelps of either pain or disbelief that accompanied them. “Buy you a drink?”  
  
It took a split second for Dipper to realize that this really hot biker chick was wanting to buy  _him_  a drink. His thoughts raced to “This has to be some kind of setup”; he was way out of his depth and in unknown (possibly enemy) territory here. A pretty face like hers was exactly the sort that could easily get him into trouble.  
  
“Oh,” he quickly replied, “I like to, but I’ve got a long night of driving still ahead of me.”  
  
“One drink doesn’t hurt,” the biker woman said as she stepped closer to Dipper, “I should know, I’ve had at least four tonight.”  
  
Dipper froze up as he took note of how pretty the woman’s eyes were from this close. Despite being a common shade of brown, there seemed to be lights dancing across them, like shooting stars moving across the night sky. It was a sight to see for sure, but at the same time the fact that she was clearly a member of a biker gang and she was making a pass at him in the middle of a biker bar got his hackles up.  
  
Even as his pulse quickened, he played it cool, not outwardly giving away the tumult within. “Besides, I’m not old enough to drink so…”  
  
Her brows jumped slightly when she saw the uncertainty, suspicion, and excitement in his eyes. She laughed. “Man you’re cute, coming in here and thinking anyone cares if you’re old enough to drink.”  
  
She glanced left and right, wordlessly prompting him to do the same and take stock of the bikers in the room. Something had changed the mood in the room when she came over to him, the other bikers weren’t very interested in shooting any kind of look his way.  
  
As he scanned the room, she explained. “This is a one percenter bar–we’re Outlaws, the  _bad bikers._  No one’s going to care at all that you’re ‘not old enough.’” She took his arm and tugged him along after her. “So c’mon, you can have whatever you like.”  
  
As Dipper let himself be pulled along, to the low-key cheers from the woman’s fellow bikers, she looked back at him and smirked. “Even if it’s not on the menu.”  
  
_“Are you sure the drink is for me?”_  Dipper thought with a developing blush. Within a moment he was hauled past the table Mabel was holding her arm-wrestling matches at, and caught a passing look at her sister driving the arm of another biker into the lacquered wood surface.  
  
“Seriously, how does she do that?” Dipper asked himself aloud, before he turned to the biker woman and the two empty stools at the bar she brought him to.  
  
The woman took a seat and leaned back against the bar, before gesturing behind her to the barkeeper, who was waiting for her and Dipper to make their orders. “So, what’ll you have, twinkie?”  
  
Dipper huffed at the nickname in the mildest annoyance, before he realized that he didn’t know her name and vice-versa. As he sat down on the offered stool, he decided to get off the back foot before he was up dragged into whatever ulterior motive this woman may have had.  
  
He rested an elbow on the counter, and leaned forward a bit with an intrigued smile. “How about your name, to start?”  
  
The woman’s eyebrows rose at the shift in confidence he put up, and she was already liking it. “Ava, yours?”  
  
“Tyrone.”  
  
He took Ava off guard with his answer, before she laughed again. “You don’t look like a Tyrone to me.”  
  
She hummed and gave him a more speculative gaze. It held for a little bit, before she shrugged her shoulders. “An Alex or a Toby or an Andrew…” She laughed. “You know, white boy names!”  
  
Dipper shrugged his shoulders. “I have a pretty white boy face…”  
  
“It sure is,” Ava said with a lustful heat in her voice, and Dipper felt a shot right to the heart.  
  
Okay… maybe she didn’t have an ulterior motive, and Dipper’s pulse was racing.  
  
“W-well, you’re looking good too,” Dipper replied as he fought off his blush.  
  


**|The Girl With the Axolotl Tattoo|**

  
Outside of the bar, as “BLURN” waited impatiently besides the Pines’ wagon for them to pay him for the fueling he just completed, the sound of a car door opening caught his ear. The grizzled old man looked at the jeep parked at the end of the motorcycle row, and in the glow of the parking lot’s single tall light he could see a blonde-haired woman wearing a pink hoodie and tight black leggings kneeling beside the bike closest to the jeep.  
  
“Eh?” The old gas attendant squinted in the low light, and watched as the woman began walking down the row of motorcycles, in her right hand she held a bright red jerry can in the most haphazard fashion, with its spout pointed towards the bikes and the contents leaking out onto their rear tires, pipes, and fenders.  
  
As she walked towards the end of the row, and the front door of the club, the bikers who’d given Dipper bad looks on his way in spotted her. One of them standing up and recoiling a bit when he saw the emptying jerry can.  
  
“The heck?” He asked as the woman pulled the hood of her sweater over her head upon reaching the last bike.  
  
The woman then dropped the gas can, and stepped right up to the bikers.  
  
From under the hood, green eyes that reflected her heart’s malicious intent bored into the men. Her voice, hard yet accented of a girl of particular wealth, carried it in a calm and steady manner. “You guys were all warned.”  
  
The bikers looked at each other, before they began walking towards her. “What do you mean warned?!”  
  
He reached out to grab her, but the girl lashed out with her left hand and caught his arm in a grip so strong it stopped him cold. He looked at his arm and then at her, surprised, before she tightened her grip even further and he screamed in pain as the bones in his forearm began to break.  
  
Back inside of the bar Mabel effortlessly dispatched her tenth opponent, bringing his fist down onto the table. “Ha!”  
  
Getting up, the biker easily twice her width and three times her weight rose and rubbed his tender wrist. “Gah… how does she keep doing that, man?”  
  
“My Master has taught me well,” Mabel said sagely, before she looked around for her brother. “Oh man, I should’ve done this for money. Dipper wouldn’t need to go to the ATM…?”  
  
Right away, she noticed Dipper speaking with Ava, and her brow furrowed in indignation. Of all the nerve, after he’d told her to not accept anything from anyone, not even compliments?! As a biker even larger and stronger than the last one–and wearing a mechanical arm–sat at the table, Mabel shot to her feet and marched for the bar. “Oooh, that womanizer!”  
  
“Hey!” The biker, his cyborg arm ready to wrestle, called after her. “What about me?”  
  
Backing right up, Mabel sat down, grabbed his hand, and with a simple rolling motion drove it into the table before getting up and going back to the bar.  
  
“So what brings you to our neck of the woods, Ty? On your way to Seattle or something?” Ava asked him as she–without looking back–held up two fingers to the bartender, who quickly acquired two whiskey glasses and a bottle of the good stuff.  
  
“Not that far, my sister and I are moving to a small town a couple hours north of here. We just stopped in for gas,” Dipper admitted.  
  
“No kidding, escaping the city life?” What a strange mindset for kids these days to have, Ava thought.  
  
“We lived in Piedmont all our lives, city living’s wasted on us,” Dipper revealed.  
  
Ava grinned. “Get out of here, I’m from Oakland.”  
  
“Huh, small world!” Dipper said before the two glasses of whisky were set down between them. He pretended not to notice them. “So uh… what got you into the biker club… business?”  
  
Ava shrugged her shoulders. “I like riding motorcycles and beatin’ up dudes.” She held up a fingerless-gloved fist. “I’m so damn good at it, I made it my full-time job.”  
  
“Y-you look it.” There was no denying that; for a slim and curvy body, there was a strength in her physique that reminded him a lot of Wendy.  
  
Picking up her glass, she held it up in toast to Dipper. “I’m good at a lot of other things, if you’re curious to find out.”  
  
Dipper was not sure how to handle this. He’d been asked out before, and dated enough to not be the clumsy idiot about it… but he’d never actually met a girl this dang aggressive. Well, who was this aggressive and it was doing something for him.  
  
He looked towards his glass, and picked it up. “Uh… to being good at things?”  
  
Ava laughed. “Man, you’re kind of a dork.”  
  
Nevertheless she tapped her glass to his and brought it to her lips to sip. Dipper was about to do the same, when Mabel came up behind him and rested her chin on his shoulder.  
  
“Hey,” she said all casual-like but with unmistakable venom, “Do you think you’ll be good for the rest of the trip? Or am I going to have to  _leadfoot it_  when you’re done here?”  
  
Dipper jumped and looked at her. “Ah! Uh…  _Shooting Star!_  Hey, I was just… um…”  
  
Ava looked at this other girl with a bit of confusion, as much at her sudden appearance as her name. “Shooting Star?”  
  
“Yeah our parents hated me,” Mabel said in her chipper tone, “Right  _Tyrone?”_  
  
Dipper sighed in relief that she recognized the need for fake names, before he explained to Ava. “They’re hippies.”  
  
He turned to Mabel, as much grateful as he was disappointed and ashamed. “Look, I’m sorry. I know what I said-”  
  
“No, no! It’s fine!” Mabel said as she stepped back. “You’re young, it’s late, there’s a pretty lady right here who’s happy to have a drink with you.”  
  
Ava tilted her glass to Mabel in gratitude.  
  
“But I’ve just got done beating eleven guys at arm wrestling when I could’ve been learning about their deep and enriching life stories, and building long-lasting connections,” she finished a bit dramatically.  
  
Ava looked towards the table where the arm-wrestling had commenced, and indeed saw eleven particularly strong bikers rubbing their arms like they just tried to pull a truck uphill with them. “Whoa.”  
  
Dipper sighed and set down his whisky. “Okay, I’m sorry… that was a little selfish.”  
  
He turned to Ava, a bit contrite now. “And I’m sorry. We still have a few hours to go, and I did promise her we’d make it to town by sunrise.”  
  
Looking disappointed, Ava nodded. “Hey though, it’s not like we won’t see each other again, right?”  
  
Before Dipper could answer, she reached out and took his hand, gripping it firmly in a shake, before letting it go. When Dipper pulled his hand back, a note with a phone number written on it was left in his palm.  
  
He looked up from his hand, as Ava winked. “Call me when you’re settled in, and I’ll ride on through.”  
  
Ava looked to Mabel and nodded to her. “Sorry for getting your brother in trouble. You’ve got no beef from me.”  
  
Mabel brightened. Yay, they made a friend and it was conflict free! “Well, if you’re sorry then I don’t really see the harm.”  
  
“Oh I am,” Ava reassured her, “I can respect a girl who can hold her own.”  
  
At that exact moment, the heavy steel door went flying off its hinges and crashed to the floor. The bruised and beaten body of a biker lay on it, groaning in pain.  
  
The entire bar fell quiet, and looked out the door to see the woman in the pink hoodie and purple leggings, staring right back at them from under her hot pink hood. Around her, the other four bikers lay on the ground, groaning in pain and holding injured limbs. She was standing right next to the bike closest to the door with one hand on her round hip.  
  
As Dipper walked to the doorway, disbelief overcame him when he saw the blonde-hair that spilled from under the hood, and just beyond her bangs a glint of green. It caused him to recoil a bit, the gleam of those eyes.  
  
“Did… did she do that?” Mabel asked.  
  
Ava was up from her seat, and looking out as well. “The heck…?”  
  
“I’m going to tell you like I told these guys,” the woman then said, “You guys were warned, but you didn’t listen. Now this is happening.”  
  
With that she whirled around and kicked the bike with such force it went skidding into the bike next to it, and the two went on to hit the one after that and after that.  
  
Ava, seeing the bike get kicked, rushed outside with other bikers, leaving Mabel and Dipper to be caught up in the rush to the door. As they were forced out the bikes kept collapsing together until they came to a stop right against the very last bike in the row… which slowly tipped over and fell upon the lit butane lighter that’d been left on the ground next to it.  
  
Dipper, Mabel, and Ava, along with the other bikers who made it outside, could only watch as fire abruptly swept across the entire row of bikes, turning into a brilliant column of flame that stretched up into the night with great heat and intensity.  
  
“Whoa, holy…!” Dipper gasped.  
  
“Oh my gosh!” Mabel yelped.  
  
It only took a second, before it sank in that among those bikes Ava’s was most certainly on fire. Turning to the woman who set them on fire, her brown eyes seemed to turn red. “Oh you are dead!”  
  
Before she could run up to her and attack her herself, the other bikers went berserk, rushing straight towards the girl yelling and howling. As the crowd rushed her, Dipper grabbed Mabel’s hand and pulled her away. “Mabel, get to the car!”  
  
As they broke out of the charge and ran for their Subaru, both turned towards the angry mob as it fell upon their attack her like a wave… that broke. The first man to reach her, had his arm caught and he was quickly driven into the ground before he was dragged up and used as a club to knock back several other bikers.  
  
Dipper’s eyes flew wide. “What the…?”  
  
Mabel’s mouth fell open. “Oh my gosh!”  
  
Rounding the flailing bodies, three more biker’s attacked the woman’s sides. The first one to strike came from her left with a pipe, but she easily evaded his swing before punching him in the stomach then elbowing him in the chest. Turning around–she weaved around her second attacker, swinging a pool cue, and faced the third who she kicked in the groin before quickly spinning and backhanding him away. She finished her spin, raising her leg and kicking down the pool cue biker before he swung for her again.  
  
Climbing into the car and stopping to watch the scene, Mabel whispered. “She knows kung fu…”  
  
Dipper just gaped as five more bikers attempted to have a go at her, but were similarly dispatched with ease. “Whoa.”  
  
Realizing that this girl was monstrously strong, the remaining bikers quickly lost their nerve and began to scatter. One of the larger bikers, however, the very metal-armed man Mabel defeated last at the arm-wrestling table, bore down on the hooded girl.  
  
As she prepared to fight him, he jumped straight up to come down on her from above with his fist of doom. Watching his approach, she jumped back on her hands, curled up her legs, and kicked him with both feet into his metal fist, sending him spinning back up in the air to land on the steep roof of the bar and then roll down to the ground.  
  
As she sprung up onto her feet, she suddenly swerved right and to avoid a flash of steel. The front of the girl’s sweater, and her left sleeve had been cut open by a knife–a switchblade wielded by Ava, who seemed to come out of nowhere. As the hooded girl turned around to stare at her in surprise, Dipper watched her left sleeve fall away and saw something on her left forearm in the light of the flame: a cute and super deformed rendition of an axolotl tattooed square between her wrist and elbow.  
  
Lowering her blade, and scowling at the girl, Ava gripped her knife tighter, as her American flag-bandana wearing companion and four more bikers who carried themselves with surprising confidence among the other panicking bikers walked out and joined her.  
  
“Message received,” Ava said to the hooded girl.  
  
The hooded girl regarded the six remaining bikers, before she backed towards the flames spreading across the parking lot and turned to vanish into them.  
  
Dipper was near dumbstruck. “Did… did that  _just happen?”_  
  
“We’re not even in Gravity Falls yet, do you think the crazy leaked out?” Mabel asked in amazement.  
  
Dipper looked to his sister, and then back to the fire. “Oh man, the Stans aren’t gonna believe this.”  
  
Ava walked over to the window and calmly knocked on it. Dipper cracked open his door. “Ava, are you okay? What… who was that?”  
  
Ava looked back towards the fire, and then back to him. “You guys should just get going. No point in you sticking around.”  
  
Dipper looked back and forth between Ava and the fire again. “No, seriously. Who was that? What did she mean by warning? How was she able to do that?!”  
  
“How were  _you_  able to?!” Mabel asked Ava.  
  
Ava just held up her hand and gestured to the road. “Trust me, there’s stuff out in those hills that scare the crap out of outlaws like me. You guys are fresh and clean… you don’t need to get involved in that hot mess. Just get driving and don’t say a thing about what you saw, okay? It’s best for you.”  
  
“But…!” Dipper wanted to know, he  _needed_  to know.  
  
Ava gripped the door. “I said  _go,_  before these guys get pissed off and decide to take out what happened on you!”  
  
Dipper withdrew and started up the car. “R-right! I uh… bye!”  
  
Shifting into gear, Dipper pulled out of the lot of the now completely aflame biker bar, Mabel looking back as the other patrons and the owner quickly evacuated the building. Not looking back at all, Dipper raced down the road and got on the ramp to the highway.  
  
“That… that was…” Mabel said as she watched the bright plume of flame fall back in the distance.  
  
They’d seen the end of the world unfold right in front of them, seeing that was just as jarring. An unkind reminder to how terrible the weirdness they’d seen in Gravity Falls could be. Silent, Mabel sank into her seat and buckled herself in. She looked at Dipper, firmly gripping the steering wheel as he flew past a silver jeep that was similarly doing a hefty amount of speed down the highway.  
  
In silence, they sat for several minutes, watching the reflectors of road markers pass on an otherwise pitch dark road… before Mabel spoke.  
  
“… You still have her phone number, right?” She asked.  
  
Dipper, eyes on the road, checked his pockets and pulled out the note Ava gave him. “Yeah.”  
  
“Well, tonight wasn’t completely bad then!” Mabel said optimistically.  
  
Another moment passed quietly, before Dipper took a deep breath. “Mabel?”  
  
“Yeah?” She asked in response.  
  
“What I’m about to say is probably the most insane thing you will ever hear come out of my mouth, because darn it… it’s completely insane to me.”  
  
“I don’t know, I remember when you had your wisdom teeth out,” Mabel noted. She blushed a bit and looked aside. “You said… things.”  
  
Dipper blocked that out, and just said it. “That girl back back there, she looked exactly like Pacifica.”  
  
Silence fell in the car again, and at least two more markers passed before Mabel looked at her brother again.  
  
“… Yeah?”  
  


**|Last Straw|**

  
The scream of distant fire engines growing, Ava sat on the edge of the road across from the intensely burning bar with her gaze locked onto the fire engulfed motorcycles. Her burly companion, whose patch simply said Val, stepped over to her, along with the other four bikers of her group. Three men, and another woman. With a big hand, Val reached down and gripped her shoulder.  
  
“Can always get a new bike,” he said to her, “Nobody died either.”  
  
“This is their strategy now. Hit everyone until they finally hit us,” Ava growled, “And they think there’s nothing we can do about it.”  
  
Val let go of her. “We kinda can’t; even with our home base, the President’s not ready to start a war with the most powerful family in Oregon.”  
  
Ava kicked at the ground. “That’s bull. I’m not going to run around from bar to bar only to see them torched because the old man is scared of fighting a bunch of weirdos head on. It’s high time we started planning our own offensive, and getting the River Road Spellriders to stop scurrying like rats and start fighting like dogs.”  
  
She lowered her head. “When we get back to the Falls… we’re gonna call a meeting and start looking for a solution to our problem.”


	2. Back to the Falls!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dipper and Mabel return to Gravity Falls, and are reunited with a new unexpected employee, and then deal with an unexpected crisis.

Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is property of the Walt Disney Corporation, and hopefully Alex Hirsch. Support the official release. Seriously, do not fuck with them. They will end you. There’s some other stuff that doesn’t belong to me in there, support them as well, if you want to, but don’t fuck around with Disney. Don’t.

 **Freaks: A Story of Mysteries**  
**A Gravity Falls Story**  
**Chapter 2/?**

**|Retirony|**

On the edge of Gravity Falls, Oregon, atop one of the hills overlooking the town and its curious geography of overhanging cliffs spanned by a single abandoned minecart bridge, a police cruiser parked atop a hilltop sat pointed at the sunset well beyond the cliffs. On the hood of the car, the Sheriff of the Gravity Falls Police Department Daryl Blubs and his deputy Edwin Durland sat and watched the sunset while they cracked open cans of Pitt’s Peach Soda and chugged them down.

“Can’t believe it’s been ten years we’ve worked together on the force,” the portly, gray haired African-American sheriff said to his tall and skinny caucasian deputy after having his drink. “Ten peaceful years without a single crime or disaster… yet still an adventure.”

“Eeyup,” Deputy Durland replied, “And tomorrow it’s all over. We get to go on an all new adventure.”

Sheriff Blubs looked down at his can of Pitt’s, and heaved a big sigh. “You know, you don’t need to leave the force, too. This hat has your name on it.”

“It wouldn’t be the same without you around,” Durland replied, “Besides, the new Sheriff comin’ from the coast is sharper than a fishing hook. Not much for me to do.”

Sheriff Blubs frowned.

“‘Sides, who’s gonna ride motorcycles ‘cross the country with you to take pictures of each state’s biggest collections of porcelain elephants?” Durland asked.

Blubs’s frown turned upside down. He rested his free hand on Durland’s shoulder. “Bad boys for life?”

“Bad boys for life,” Durland said, a little misty-eyed.

The two returned to looking at the sunset, both taking sips of their sodas.

“You know,” Durland said, “Two things come to mind.”

“Yeah, what?” Blubs asked.

“First thing being, there was that whole thing that happened four years ago-”

“Never mind all that,” Blubs cut him off.

Durland quickly stopped and cleared his throat. He didn’t want to get tased, again. “Second thing is: don’t you think it’s kinda funny that we’re on our way out without nothin’ bad at all happening?”

Blubs turned towards his deputy again. “Huh?”

“I mean, it’s our last day as the law around here, isn’t this usually when somethin’ terrible happens?”

As Blubs mulled over that, a shadow crept its way up the hill towards the two law enforcement officers. “You say that, but I’ve been planning that for years!”

Durland mouth fell open; he was totally surprised. “Huh?”

“Y’see, I figured out right at the start if I didn’t do my job, when it was time to retire, I wouldn’t be doing something dangerous that might make my being days away from retirement ironic. I beat out the clock by never playin’, it’s the only way to win,” Blubs revealed.

Durland dropped his can of soda, gawking at Blubs. “So you mean… all this time we spent goofin’ off and not doin’ our jobs was so… was so you would be able to retire unironically?”

“Yep,” Blubs replied, like he was some kind of super genius whose plan had just come together.

Durland mulled over the implications, the grave and grievous implications… before he smiled and thrust his hands into the air. “WOO! Well shoot, thanks for the best ten years of my life!”

“And many more!” Blubs said with a laugh, before both officers finally noticed the shadow standing over them.

The owner of the shadow, a dark and shaggy beast standing ten feet in height and covered in gray, shaggy fur with all manner of twigs and leaves sticking from it. It stared down at them with eyes like burning topaz, and lifted its arms as it let out a bellowing roar that drowned out the screams of both officers.

**|Mistress Mystery|**

“Hey, this is Road to the Falls entry number five,” Dipper said quietly to the camera as they drove up tree-lined road just on the edge of the town of Gravity Falls, Oregon.

The morning light was streaming through the trees from the east, casting moving shadows over the interior of the car and its occupants. Dipper was in the passenger seat this time, and Mabel was behind the wheel as their all-wheel drive station wagon rounded the last bend towards their destination.

“After an… interesting stop along Route 5, we’ve finally made it,” he announced before he pointed the camera out the window at the water tower that bore the name of the small town they’d waited so long to return to.

He focused the camera on Mabel, who was bouncing in her seat in spite of having been driving for the last four hours.

“Mabel is at the wheel, it turns out that she wants to be at the helm when we pull up to the Shack.”

Mabel glanced quickly at the camera “Heeh, don’t point that at me while I’m driving, Dipper~! I’m gonna wreck it.”

Dipper pointed the camera at his own face. “Mabel loves the lens, every time it’s on her she’s got to give it her full attention.”

“You mean lenses love _me,”_ Mabel said as she took one hand off the wheel to pantomime a photo shoot pose.

Dipper rolled his eyes and set the camera back on the dashboard. “We’re a little late getting here, but that’s okay. No shame in being late for your own party.”

“That’s right! We’re as fashionable as they come!” Mabel declared off camera.

“Our old friends here in the Falls, Soos, Melody, Wendy, Pacifica, just about everyone, are waiting for our return. Our first full day here is going to be spent catching up with all our old friends.” Dipper looked up and his eyes widened. “Mabel, look.”

Mabel was already looking herself, and smiled big as the familiar shape of an old brown A-Frame hut appeared amongst the trees. The big road-facing yellow signs bearing the words “Mystery Shack” came into view.

“The Shack!” Mabel shouted before abruptly swerving off the road and into a gravel-surfaced parking lot.

As Mabel slammed the brakes and the car skidded to a halt, Dipper picked up the camera and pointed it up at the old wooden A-Frame shack turned roadside attraction/home. Unsnapping his seatbelt, he scrambled out of the car and stood up to look at it.

“There it is,” he said, “Four years since we’ve last seen it…”

Dipper lowered the camera and raised an eyebrow. The Mystery Shack didn’t look changed at all, except for the large red “S” at the start of the word “Shack” being restored to its proper place. The Shack, the clearing around it, the tree with the question mark carved into it, the old totem pole by the edge of the road. It was all exactly as he remembered it.

Something was off though.

“There are a lot of people here,” Mabel realized as she looked around at the vehicles parked in the parking lot. Cars with plates from all over the North American continent were packed into almost every available spot, their occupants were gathered around the front door of the Mystery Shack, waiting for the doors to open. Tourists, genuine tourists, and not an angry mob–which confused Dipper.

“I get that business was doing better since Soos took over, but this well?” He asked as he and Mabel approached the back of the crowd.

“This early?” Mabel pulled back her sleeve and all of the five watches she wore on her forearm. “It’s not even seven o’clock!”

Dipper looked around again and noticed that for all of the cars that were there, some important ones weren’t. Soos’ truck and Melody’s hatchback were absent from the driveway. There was a car parked there, the Stanmobile, covered in a tarp.

“Soos and Melody aren’t here, then why are all of these people waiting-?” A blast of pyrotechnic smoke from the front door of the Mystery Shack cut him off. Startled, both he and Mabel looked as the crowd began to clap and cheer at the display.

“Welcome wayward travelers…” A woman’s haunting voice called from the thick cloud of smoke that rolled from the doorway.

Hearing the voice, Mabel brightened while Dipper shook his head and gawked at the silhouette of a fez-wearing figure obscured by the smoke.

“… To a place beyond understanding. An enigma, a conundrum, a place where imagination and dreams reside…!” The figure spun in their hand a cane, before they set it down outside the edge of the dense smoke, white-gloved hands resting atop the 8-ball that capped the wooden walking stick.

Dipper sat up, gaping. “No way…”

Picking up the cane, its wielder twirled it around. “… To a place filled with shock and horror and like at least two jackalopes!”

With a sweep of the cane, the shrouding smoke was cleared, revealing a lovely young woman dressed like a stage magician straight out of Las Vegas. A suit blazer, cummerbund, and bowtie combo was pulled snugly over her torso, the white fabric of her shirt straining across her chest. Black high hip shorts squished the soft flesh around her broad hips and the wonderfully angled small of her back, fishnet stockings embossed into her full shapely thighs and black high heels helped her stand over the crowd.

Atop her golden locked head, the woman wore a familiar maroon-colored fez with the image of Pac-Man, while on her back, a short red mantle billowed behind her neckline.

“Courage and curiosity have brought you here to the Mystery Shack, and I am the keeper of its secrets, Mistress Mystery!” She declared flamboyantly.

The mysterious woman bowed to the crowd. “Dare you enter my mysterious realm?”

The crowd dared, and she had to quickly step aside as the tourists filed past the log-lined archway into the museum of the offbeat and weird. Mistress Mystery, pleased by their courage, tapped her cane on the ground. “To get past the turnstyle and enter the museum is twenty dollars per person. Anyone trying to hop it will be ejected by the security cyborg. Don’t let her size fool you, she can rip the engine block out of your car with her off-hand.”

The sound of a stampede of horses trying to race an express train filled the air and alerted Mistress Mystery. Looking towards the back of the crowd, she spotted a sweater-wearing woman almost a foot taller than her barreling towards her with biggest smile on her face and her arms stretched out. She didn’t even have a half-second to protect her face when Mabel leaped at her, calling out her name.

_“PACIFICAAAAAAAAAAA!”_

Mabel’s tackling hug was spot on, and she and Mistress Mystery went crashing to the ground, kicking up a small cloud of dust. When it cleared, both young women were embraced tightly, Pacifica Northwest and Mabel nuzzling one another’s cheeks as they laughed together. “Oh my gosh, Mabel! You’re here!”

“I am! And look at you!” Mabel pulled back. “Oh my gosh, you look amazing!”

Pacifica smiled smugly up at her. “Please, Mabel, I’m _me,”_ she said with her characteristic ego, before she looked over Mabel. “But more importantly, for once, look at _you._ Where did you get all of… this?”

Mabel pulled back, still grinning as Pacifica gestured to her. “I know, right? Behold, for I have become a symbol of beauty and charm to rival you.” Mabel presented herself with one hand and her sleeve slipped down to expose the five tacky watches she wore along her arm.

With an amused snort, Pacifica rolled her eyes. “Yeah, like the image of a Greek Goddess.”

Mabel stood and helped Pacifica up to her feet. “Anyway! Mistress Mystery? I can’t believe you’re running tours!”

Pacifica bent down to pick up her fez and cane. “Oh please, I’m a natural on any stage and you know it.”

“You are!” Mabel agreed. “You had the whole crowd under your power, I think Dipper’s still trying to cram his tongue back into his mouth.”

Pacifica looked around. “Oh man, how’d he turn out if you’re…”

She spotted him, as he walked up to her and Mabel with a friendly smile, and her eyebrows rose. Four years wasn’t a long time in the grand scheme, but seeing how far Dipper had grown stunned her more than Mabel's full body tackle. She stared at him, her blue eyes getting big and shiny as she beheld the young man before her.

“Oh my lord,” she said aloud, and Mabel giggled.

“Hey Paz,” Dipper greeted, like he had no clue about her reaction to him.

Averting her gaze, she tried to play cool despite looking like a b-movie budget Zatanna cosplayer. “Hey Pines, so… you look… nice.”

“Yeah, I wanted to be in as good shape I could be coming back.”

“It’s a good shape–you’re in good shape, good job,” Pacifica almost babbled.

Mabel giggled from deep in her throat, not five minutes and she got to see Pacifica Northwest looking like a deer caught in the headlights.

Dipper nodded, and made an attempt to push away the curious tension that was suddenly everywhere. “You look good as always.”

Dipper Pines was not good at easing tension.

Pacifica's face suddenly got really warm, and she let out a light, airy giggle as she tried to move the subject away from how irresistibly hot her first actual friends became. “There’s plenty of time to talk about how amazing _I_ am later. What’s the deal with you two? I thought you were going to be here this evening.”

Dipper grew confused. “We said we were going to be here in the morning.”

Mabel hugged Pacifica’s arm. “Did you forget?”

Pacifica pondered itm “Huh, I guess it slipped my mind. I’ve been like, hecking swamped since I took over running tours.”

 _“Hecking?”_ Dipper thought even as Mabel was adding it to her lexicon of cute-sounding words and phrases.

“Well yeah, you’re so popular and junk! But I mean… that’s all right, right? It’s just a miscommunication!” Mabel encouraged. “I mean, everyone else remembered we were going to be here this morning!”

Dipper agreed. “Yeah, where’s everyone else? Soos? Melody?”

Pacifica looked nervous. “Um… they’re all the way up in Seattle.”

The hearts of both twins sank, as Mabel pulled away. “Seattle?!”

“Yeah, they left like three days ago because Reggie’s wife went into labor and Abuelita pestered them into taking her up there. She wasn’t going to see her great-grandbaby over facetime.”

“Okay, what about Wendy? Is she around?” Dipper asked.

Pacifica grimaced. “… Still at OSU.”

“She’s not here, either?!” Mabel yelled.

Dipper looked betrayed. “Robbie? Tambry?”

“Candy’s here, but what about Grenda?” Mabel pleaded.

“Robbie and Tambry are out of town too. I think Grenda is still in Austria… I haven’t heard from her in like two weeks.”

Dipper and Mabel knew both McGuckets weren’t even in the country, having been gone to Japan for business involving robots. Dipper shook his head, disbelieving that no one else was around. “… Gideon?”

Pacifica shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t think I’ve seen him at all since I started working here.”

Removing his hat, Dipper scratched his head, trying to make sense of it. “I… I can’t believe it. Mabel and I made today a big deal. We told everyone we were going to be here… and they just… aren’t here?”

Mabel lit up in realization, before she turned around and reversed the other way–growing very despondent. “Well, if they’re all busy. Then I guess that’s that…”

“That’s that?” Dipper repeated incredulously. “Mabel! We gotta try to call them, or get in touch or something! Something isn’t right here!”

Mabel turned and went back towards the car. “It’s… it’s fine Dipper. I mean, it’s not like we’re going anywhere, right?”

Pacifica lowered her gaze, and gripped her cane. “Sorry guys, I’ll try to make it up to you this evening.”

Dipper wasn’t having it. “I mean it, something’s been off since we got here. There’s no way anyone could just forget we were coming back like that…!”

Mabel looked back. “Dipper? Come on, we gotta get the car around front before we block the lot anymore.”

Pacifica looked towards the thinning crowd now that people were piling into the Shack. “And I have to run a tour. You guys get settled in, me and Candy will join you for breakfast. Does that sound good?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. C’mon Dipper let’s go,” Mabel called back.

“But Mabel-!” Dipper began, before he turned back towards Pacifica. “Paz-!”

“I gotta go before the suckers gets rowdy!” Pacifica called as she reached the museum’s door. “See you at breakfast, dudes!”

The door shut, and Dipper’s shoulders dropped in frustrated exasperation. He pulled his phone from his pocket. “I gotta make some phone calls.”

“Dipper, come on!” Mabel called after him as he stormed towards the forest. When he fell out of sight, she warred with herself on what to say, before she let out a sigh and just turned back towards the car. He was going to be his usual Dippy self, so she was going to let him. Pacifica would make up for it later.

  **|The Dream Demon|**

 _“Hey dudes, this is Soos-”_  
  
_“And this is Melody!”_

_“We can’t answer the phone right now because we’re doing cool stuff. Like fighting pirates.”_

_“Babe, behind you!”_

_“Whoa! Haha, he almost snuck up on me. He was like a pirate, that was a ninja. Anyway, leave a message-”_

Dipper ended the call, and stared down at the phone in annoyance. He’d called everyone twice and received no response from anyone. Wendy’s voicemail was full so he couldn’t even leave a message with her. Not that he was in the mood to leave one, since apparently everyone in Gravity Falls that he knew just blew him and Mabel off without warning. It tore him up inside.

“Seriously? This is what I’m coming back to?” He asked aloud.

Shoving his phone into his pocket, the scruffy young man stomped off deeper into the forest, his jaw set and his eyes locked to the poorly kept and overgrown path as he brooded angrily. It hurt, it really did, and it was almost enough to make him want to punch something.

The browns and greens of the forest were broken right at the edge of his vision by gray object. His gaze darted left before he turned and stared at it fully as his breath caught. It was a large stone triangle with top hat and a single giant eye up near the point. It had limbs as well, stick-like things with the right arm extended to make a handshake.

_Bill Cipher._

After Weirdmageddon, it was so easy for the town to remember to avoid this part of the forest. Everyone did, even Ford, hence its unkempt state. Long after his destruction and the petrification of his physical form, he still had an effect on the town and its people.

Ford told both him and Mabel that a few people thought to destroy or bury the statue, but when everyone finally agreed to it… there was no one brave enough to actually go near it out of fear. That even the slightest touch, let alone disturbing him with heavy machinery or explosives, will awaken him. The idea fell through and the town stayed away from that part of the forest since.

_His reawakening._

The thought of it chilled Dipper to the bone. After leaving Gravity Falls, he had his fair share of nightmares about Bill and the things he did. Dreaming about him was the worst, because there was no way of knowing if they were just dreams or if Bill was actually there–trapped back in the Nightmare Realm and taking it out on Dipper whenever he could.

Luckily, the only people who shared his dreams were Mabel, Grunkle Ford, Gideon, and Wendy. And their dreams were all different–with all of Ford’s in particular being of him effortlessly destroying Bill over and over thanks to mastery of lucid dreaming. He taught the technique to Dipper later, and rather than dream of destroying Bill, Dipper focused on anything _but_ Bill and confirmed that there were no incursions from the demon.

Dipper stared at the statue, and after a moment smiled bitterly. “Sure enough, everything goes wrong and here you are with your hand out to make a deal. Never change, Bill.”

He gave the stone construct a much harsher look. “Seriously, don’t.”

Turning away, Dipper rested his hands on his hips and leaned back to stretch and pop his back. Above his head, the undisturbed canopy of the Oregon forest silently filtered the morning sun to slanted rays of light that offered the forest a pseudo-twilight that would brighten only a little more as the day progressed. Even in the presence of Bill, the forest was as peaceful as the many he came to explore in the years since his last visit.

He let his hands drop at his sides. Peaceful, not a strange thing to be seen aside from the piece of work behind him. Even the forest was disappointing him.

“This is the foot I’m starting today on, isn’t it?” Dipper asked aloud.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Technically today hadn’t been started at all. This was a continuation of yesterday and all that came with it: meeting the bikers, being hit on by their leader, the brawl… and the girl with the axolotl tattoo. He had almost forgotten about it in the excitement and disappointment of coming home, and now that he had more time to think about it his chief concern regarding the tattoo girl came back.

She had been so strong and ruthless, not hesitating for a moment to attack and fight to devastating effect. That didn’t seem like Pacifica at all, he was pretty sure she was a limp noodle–even though she had started taking martial arts classes because “they were cheaper than bodyguards,” according to her father scrambling to maintain his wealth after the disgrace he suffered during and after Weirdmageddon. Still, a couple of years of strip mall Krav Maga didn’t give you superhuman strength.

Maybe it was someone that looked like her? How many blonde-haired, green eyed girls with ample hips and thighs were out there? Probably a lot, Dipper liked to imagine.

He rubbed his nose again and smiled a bit. Pacifica really did look great in her Mistress Mystery getup. The Shack had been doing very well recently, and if she was showing off in _that_ then there was no question regarding the secret behind its success.

Moving his hand to the back of his neck, Dipper rubbed it and sighed. “And because of it she’s super busy even this early in the morning.”

Pacifica was running the Shack, everyone was busy with their lives. Maybe asking of everyone to make plans for their arrival was a bit too much. Getting so upset about it that he ditched Mabel to unpack certainly was.

“I should go back,” he said as he turned to leave–only for the sound of movement through the underbrush to stop him. It was something large, large enough to have made plenty of sound for him to notice before, but clearly careful enough to only alert him now. Stock still, Dipper slowly craned his head to the right, to glance back in the direction of the sound. Behind him, just beyond the tree that Bill’s lifeless stone corpse stood against. A single thought raced through his mind.

_“It’s close.”_

Even slower, Dipper turned his entire body to look back at the tree. Being wider than Bill was at his base, he couldn’t see a large animal. So it thankfully wasn’t a bear, or dinosaur, or a manotaur. Tense, Dipper clenched his hands into fists and raised them to chin level, his back and shoulders straightening as his feet spaced apart. In a moment, he was ready to fight but even more jazzed to turn and bolt.

As he focused everything to the tree, he could hear breathing. Heavy, labored breaths, like whatever was on the other side was out of theirs. A person? His eyebrows raising, he prepared to take a step towards the tree, when the heavy breather suddenly swung out from behind it and staggered forward a bit.

Dipper hopped back, startled. “D-Deputy Durland?!”

The ragged, disheveled deputy looked like he’d been running through the woods all night, covered in scratches and dirt and leaves. His uniform shirt was untucked, his web belt and most of its equipment was gone, and he was missing his shoes.

“W-what happened to you?!” Dipper demanded in worry.

Durland, panicked, shaking, and ashen pale from his long night, looked up at Dipper–and immediately regained his composure. “Well howdy there, Pines! When’d you get back in town?”

Taken aback by the pleasant greeting, Dipper moved his mouth but the words lagged a bit. “Uhh… I just got-?”

The moment of collected composure quickly vanished when Durland suddenly rushed and grabbed Dipper by his shirt, nearly knocking him off his feet and causing his lumberjack cap to go askew. “You gotta help! The Sheriff! He’s…! He’s…!”

And Dipper was right back into it, grabbing Durland by his shoulders. “He’s what? Where’d he go?! What happened?!”

Durland, on the verge of breaking down more took a breath to yell in his despair. “HE’S BEEN KIDNAPPED BY A BIGFOOOOOOOT!”

Dipper needed a moment to process that, before he shook his head quickly to disperse it. “Excuse me, a what?”

  **|A Bigfoot|**

Not long after, Deputy Durland was in the kitchen of the Mystery Shack, wrapped in a blanket and sipping some hot tea that Mabel had prepared for him. To Dipper and Mabel he’d spun a harrowing tale: he and Sheriff Blubs had been hanging out on the overlook, when a big hairy man-ape came up and attacked them out of the blue. Before Durland knew it, their cruiser was trashed and the horrible beast was carrying Blubs off into the trees. He’d attempted to pursue, but the beast seemed to melt into the night, and he spent the rest of it stumbling blindly through the forest.

“… And that’s when I ran into you, Pines,” Durland finished, weary now that the adrenaline was gone from his system. The chamomile tea that Mabel had brewed was helping having an effect on him too.

Mabel rested her hand over her mouth, shocked. For something to happen! “That’s awful! You must’ve been so frightened!”

“Yeah, I don’t know what to even do at a time like this,” Durland admitted. “The Sheriff and I never really went over the protocol for search and rescue.”

That didn’t surprise Dipper, but something else certainly did. “Are you sure it was a Bigfoot that took him?”

Mabel looked from Durland to her brother.She found Dipper’s line of questions puzzling. “It sounds like it was. A big hairy thing taller than the two of them together…?”

“Deputy Durland, did it have horns, like a cow?” He asked.

Durland shook his head. “No, it definitely looked like a big hairy ape. It was almost like an orangutan in my old Zoo Books, but with a hairy face.”

Mabel turned back towards him. “Wow, you still have Zoo Books?”

Durland spoke up with a hint of pride in spite of the situation “And the tiger poster.”

Mabel became starry-eyed. “Wow!”

“Mabel, pay attention,” Dipper advised, still expressing doubt. “You looked it directly in the face, right? Are you absolutely sure it was an ape?”

Mabel was paying attention, to her brother. “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s clearly Bigfoot.”

“Whatever it is, it’s got the Sheriff and we’ve got to find him,” Dipper replied. “I’m going to go down to the basement and get some equipment.”

Mabel watched Dipper leave, before she turned to Durland. “You just sit tight, Dipper and I’ll be right back before you know it.”

“Thanks Mabel,” Durland said, “Sorry about all this. We were really excited about you comin’ back and all-”

Mabel brought a finger to her smile. “Shh! Just drink your tea and get some rest.”

She left the kitchen and went straight to the Mystery Shack’s vending machine. The door behind it was already open, and she slipped in before it automatically closed. Just down the stairs, she found Dipper entering the code to activate the elevator and jogged down to him. “Dipper, what the heck?”

Dipper looked back as the doors opened. “Huh? Oh come on you’ve been down here before.”

“Not that,” Mabel said as she stepped into the elevator with him, “Why were you acting like Edwin was making his story up?”

The insinuation struck a nerve. “What? I’m not! I know he’s telling the truth!” He shook his head. “Mabel, if we’re going to find Sheriff Blubs, we’ve got to know what took him exactly. Otherwise we’ll be running around on a wild goose chase while the Sheriff gets eaten or worse.”

Mable put her hands on her hips and tilted her head to the left while she raised her right eyebrow in confusion. “Uh, it was Bigfoot.”

Dipper’s eyes rolled upward to the ceiling of the elevator. “Mabel, it was _not_ Bigfoot.”

The elevator doors opened and he maneuvered around her to enter the Underground Laboratory that Grunkle Ford built decades ago and Grunkle Stan had maintained since. He took a moment to take in the old den of retro-future style computers, devices, and machines that made up most of the interior. The lab was still up and running, albeit in a low power state following the departure of their Great Uncles. With Dipper’s arrival, it came fully to life, fluorescent lights illuminating what was a dark and cavernous hall of science and mystery.

Mabel’s voice took him from his nostalgia and excitement. “How can you just say that so certainly?”

He looked at her. “Because Bigfoot isn’t real.”

As Dipper moved ahead, Mabel stared at him, baffled. “You–of all people–don’t think Bigfoot is real? _Whaaaaat?”_

Dipper threw up his hands, exasperated. “Of course! There’s no physical evidence of Bigfoot that cannot be more reliably attributed to other paranormal instances. Manotaurs, the Abominable Bro-Man, the Multi-Bear, Steve–they’re all better explanations for what people claim is proof of Bigfoot.”

Mabel, who was following him closely, stopped in her tracks. “… Steve?”

Approaching a sliding door, Dipper pressed a button to open it and walked in. “A giant ent, he ate Grunkle Ford’s car.”

Lagging behind at the doorway, Mabel peeked into the room. It appeared to be a workshop, where the parts of various mechanical components were strewn around a workbench with several drawers on each end. “Why is he called Steve?”

Rooting through the drawers, Dipper called back. “I don’t know, the journal said he just looked like a Steve.”

Opening the bottom right-most Drawer, Dipper reached in to pull out a barrel-shaped gun with what appeared to be a tuning fork sticking from it. Holding it up, Dipper pulled back the slide on the top half, and watched as a blue energy meter filled up along the flanks of the weapon. As the light illuminated his face, he grinned.

“Magnet gun, check,” he said confidently. Getting up and pocketing the weapon, he searched around the room for something more specific in terms of firepower.

Mabel walked in, and looked around the room. “Grunkle Ford’s workshop, huh?”

“Yeah,” Dipper picked up a black police flashlight and weighed it in his hand. “Just before we left, I helped him work on a bunch of stuff. Usually just improving his older stuff, or rebuilding some of the things I thought of. He kept at it, I see.”

He pointed the flashlight at a gear and turned it on, bathing it in a red light that quickly shrank the illuminated object by half its size before it automatically cut out. He changed the setting and shined it again, this time a blue light making it grow twice its size before shutting off. Mabel gasped.

“The Height-Altering Flashlight!” She rushed over and took it. “Wow! Grunkle Ford made it all high tech and stuff!”

“It has settings to control how big or small we want to make stuff, and Grunkle Ford was even able to target specific areas with a more focused or a wider beam. Against something bigger like this monster-”

“Bigfoot,” Mabel quickly corrected.

 _“-This monster_ we might have a chance,” Dipper finished.

Mabel rolled her eyes. “All right, but dibs on the flashlight!”

Dipper patted his pocketed magnet gun. “You can have it, trust me.”

He turned for the door. “This should be enough for what we need. Now let’s get out there and…”

Mabel rested a hand on his shoulder, and leaned close to him. “Hey.”

Dipper froze, and turned his head to look back and Mabel rested her forehead against his, looking poignantly into his eyes. “… Hey.”

Mabel’s smile was almost uncharacteristically slight, but very warm. “You’re feeling better, huh?”

He stared at her, and smiled a little himself. Dipper could admit that he was a bit hasty in expecting Gravity Falls to disappoint him. Quite the contrary, it felt like he was being welcomed with open arms by the bizarre town all over again.

“A little. I mean, sure it took a monster running off with one of our friends, but par for the course right?” He asked.

“Yeah,” Mabel agreed as she touched noses with him. She pulled away and added. “The world’s most sadistic miniature golf course.”

With a hand on the magnet gun, gripping it in determination, Dipper nodded. “Let’s get out there and find Sheriff Blubs.”

Mabel’s smile grew into its more recognizable full-blown grin. “I’m right behind you, bro-bro.”

**@@@@@**

 Upstairs, Deputy Durland had just finished his tea, when a perplexed Pacifica–still in her Mistress Mystery getup–walked into the kitchen. “Deputy Durland? What the heck happened to you?”

“A Bigfoot attacked me, Miss Northwest. I spent the whole night in the woods running in fear,” Durland said after a sip, “Mm-mm! This is some delightful tea! Calmed me right down!”

Pacifica nodded. “A Bigfoot, huh?”

“Yep!” Durland answered with certainty. “Kidnapped the Sheriff, too.”

Pacifica recoiled in shock. “What, really?!”

From the basement Dipper and Mabel came charging by, barely avoiding knocking her over. “Hey Pacifica we’re going after a monster.” Dipper said as he rushed past.

“It’s Bigfoot!” Mabel shouted in excitement.

“It’s not Bigfoot!” Dippear shouted back as both went out the door.

Pacifica stared after them, as Deputy Durland quietly finished his tea. When she looked back at him, he lowered the mug and offered his view. “It was definitely Bigfoot.”

“Huh. I always thought that was a hoax,” she admitted.

Deputy Durland’s mouth fell agape, in disbelief that anyone in this town would think that.

**|The Unthinkable|**

The Mystery Cart, the old golf cart used by the staff and residents of the Mystery Shack, had already seen better days back when Dipper and Mabel were last in town. But it was better than driving a car through the dense forests surrounding the Shack and a whole lot more expendable. Though, as it puttered along, Dipper couldn’t help but notice that it handled a little better in terms of acceleration and cornering.

“Whoa… I guess Grunkle Ford put a little bit of work in the ol’ Mystery Cart,” he said shakily as he whipped around a tree at over ten miles per hour.

Mabel would agree, but she was distracted by the passing forest all around them. She smiled as she stared at the countless trees and rays of filtered sunlight. Since she left she’d seen plenty of different forests–from bayou trees, to silent snow-blanketed evergreens, to unspeakably large redwoods. None of them were like this though, where she was sure she could remember every tree she named during the course of her first summer here.

“Oh, hey Brad,” she said with a wave to a particularly tall and gnarled tree. She did a double-take. “Was that Brad? It looked like Brad.”

Dipper chuckled. “Nah, I think that was Omar.”

Mabel smiled and sat back on the Mystery Cart’s bench. “Oh well, I’ll have plenty of time to catch up with all the trees in the forest.”

Resting the Height-Altering Flashlight on her lap, she slipped one hand behind her head while resting her other arm over the back of the bench seat, right behind Dipper’s shoulders. Dipper slowed down a bit to normal golf cart speeds, and glanced towards his sister. Even with their arrival starting on the wrong foot and the Sheriff being in danger, she was unfailingly upbeat.

Mabel noticed him looking, and smiled. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”

“I know,” Dipper said as his thoughts returned to their mission at hand.

“For real though,” Mabel assured him. “By the end of the day, it’s gonna be everything you wanted today to be.” She leaned towards him, and lightly scratched the back of his neck with a lone finger. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Color spread across his face as he flinched away from the gesture. “Mabel…”

Mabel snorted out a short laugh. “You know, we’ve been ready for years for today. I wonder if Gravity Falls is ready for us?”

“So far it’s batting a thousand,” Dipper pointed out.

“I know! _Bigfoot,_ right out of the gate?”

“It’s _not_ Bigfoot.”

Mabel rolled her eyes. “Sure Doug Dippadome, and when it turns out it is, I’m gonna lord it over you _for weeks.”_

“Yeah, sure, and I’ll even give you a free favor.” Dipper had gone over this _forever._ Debunking the myth of Bigfoot was his final in AP Science– and he got a perfect grade on it.

His twin lit right up, stars and sparkles shining in her eyes. “A _favor?_ Ohohoho… there’s so much use I can get out of you, my dearest brother. Are you sure you want to bet yourself against me?”

“It’s not like I’ll lose,” Dipper said with confidence.

Mabel leaned back on the bench seat, letting her long hair spill over the back as she gave him a half-lidded stare. “Well if it’s not Bigfoot, I guess I’ll offer the same! One favor from me, _to do whatever you want with.”_

The drop in her tone to sultry prompted a startled yelp from Dipper. “Mabel!”

“What?” Mabel switched back to her normal tone, like he was the weird one for reacting like he did.

Dipper gave her an agitated glare, as they reached the edge of the forest and emerged at the overlook Sheriff and Deputy had been the night before. He looked ahead. “Maybe the Falls isn’t ready for us…”

He pulled his foot off the accelerator, and let the Mystery Cart roll to a stop. In front of it, the remains of Sheriff Blubs’ police cruiser lay upside down, a shattered and mangled wreck. If it weren’t for the markings, it would be completely unrecognizable.

Mabel, flashlight ready, walked over to it. “Whoa, Bigfoot really hated their car.”

“This looks like something Steve would do,” Dipper pointed out. He looked around, there were no signs of massive footprints in the area, though.

Mabel walked over and hopped up onto the wreck to search for clues. “Oh yeah? Well why did Edwin describe a big hairy ape?”

Dipper shrugged his shoulders. “It was around sundown so it was probably pretty dark. For all we know it was probably just covered in animal pelts. It could’ve been a Manotaur.”

“He said it didn’t have horns,” Mabel reminded him.

“His horns could’ve fallen off, you don’t know!”

“Or–and follow me on this one–it could be a Bigfoot.” Mabel looked down and froze.

Dipper groaned. “For the last time-!” His tirade was cut short when he saw how pale Mabel was. “What is it?”

Mabel knelt down, and stared at several dark splotches that were along the underside of the car. She lifted her head and looked down at the grass beside the vehicle, scanning them before she spotted what she was looking for. Jumping down from the wreck, she knelt down and leaned close to a small patch of grass.

Dipper joined her, following her gaze, and a cold fear gripped his chest. Dried blood clung to the blades of grass, and as he and Mabel looked up, they could see a long trail of it leading back into the forest.

“Edwin wasn’t bleeding,” Mabel said.

“Stay here, if you hear anything, come running!” Dipper shouted as he bolted ahead, sprinting along the trail of blood, and broke through the underbrush to reenter the forest. Stumbling over tree roots, he caught himself and staggered to a halt before scanning the area again. He quickly found more blood, the trail going downhill through the trees, broken branches and snapped roots showing that something large had been through.

Without a second thought Dipper ran fast as he could, unholstering the Magnet Gun and turning it on. _“Not like this, please not like this.”_

The last thing he wanted was to find someone dead, even someone he got along with as poorly as Sheriff Blubs. After everything that happened, that everyone got out alive after, he didn’t want to lose someone he cared about his first day back.

As he sprinted, he could see the ground drop off sharply for ten feet just ahead–nothing he couldn’t handle. Reaching the ledge he leaped and fell to a well walked path, landing in a crouch among gnarled branches and long picked-clean bones. As he recovered from the landing, the heavy smell of musk mixed with rot hit him and he winced.

Standing, Dipper turned and faced the large mouth of a cave that extended deep into the hill he’d just come down. The entrance was just shy of eight feet high, and a little bit wider, and the cavern extended deep into the ground, its steep slope vanishing into darkness. A patch of blood sat in front of the lip of the cave, and the trail of blood led down the slope.

He looked at the bones that rested on either side of the entrance, and swallowed heavily. _“It went in here.”_

He raised the magnet gun, and with his free hand reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of quarter inch ball-bearings. Gripping them tight, he entered the cave with the light from the charged magnet gun illuminating the steep slope down. Not three steps in, he stopped and pressed his back against the right side of the wall before continuing.

As he advanced further and the tunnel began to curve, he noticed that there was ambient light. Fungi growing between the cracks of the cavern’s walls and ceiling filled it with enough ambient light to no longer need the magnet gun’s glow. He rested his hand near a glowing crack and peered close, impressed with the brightness of the fungi.

“Foxfire…” But it was much brighter than what normally occurred in nature. “Interesting.”

The cavern opened up ahead, and Dipper remembered to be on his guard. If it was bright enough for him to see, then he could easily be seen by whatever monster was ahead. As he stepped away from the wall, he could see in front of him a large chamber–across from which a large creature shape was standing over a large slab of rock. Hunched over something.

It was a great, hairy thing, humanoid in shape, just shy of eight feet tall hunched over as it was. Dipper quickly raised the magnet gun and pointed it at its back. He could see, lying on the slab, was Sheriff Blubs.

Remembering the bones he saw outside, shock and fear raced through Dipper before he could stop himself. “Hey!”

The humanoid jumped in place, rearing to its full eleven foot height, and turned around to face Dipper with a surprised grunt. Seeing the young man, the creature first recoiled and then let out a bellow as it raised its long, powerful looking arms–its large, dark eyes burning with rage.

Without thinking, Dipper let the ball bearings go and activated the magnet gun on the lowest setting. With several clacks, the bearings attached themselves to the end of the device. As the monster charged him, he aimed for center mass and reversed the magnet, flinging the pellets into the chest and stomach of the monster, stopping its charge short and doubling it over with a loud gasp. The impact had knocked the air from its lungs, but hardly broke the skin.

At this setting, the bearings could go through a half-inch of plate steel.

Dipper gulped. “Well.”

The monster looked up at him, and it was even _angrier._

“Crap.”

Rearing up with both hands, the monster roared and slammed its fists on the ground, barely missing Dipper as he turned and bolted back the way he came. Holding the magnet gun behind him, he called the ball bearings back to the weapon where they quickly reattached. The monster was right behind them, scrambling to catch up, running on all fours like a giant gorilla.

Like… some giant… ape.

Now as angry and scared as he was, Dipper was incredulous on top of that. _“Oh are you freaking kidding me?!”_

 **|Grown Up|**  

High above the outskirts of Gravity Falls, a broad-winged unmanned air vehicle powered by a single turbofan engine pumping out its thrust between a v-tail assembly circled silently over the area, its cameras focused upon a particular area of the forest. The aircraft was completely unmarked, and despite its size was at an altitude where it would not be easily detected–in fact, it was invisible to most other sensors as well.

The electronic eyes of the drone focused on a part of the Oregon Forest outside of Gravity Falls, capturing a grainy and distorted image in spite of their high quality and power. At a cave near the forest’s edge, it had detected movement where there was supposed to be none. As it turned into a slight bank to make sure its cameras stayed on the entrance, it caught the image of Dipper running faster than he ever had before, with a great brown-furred ape in hot pursuit.

A signal was quickly sent.

Down on the ground, Dipper looked back in time to see the monster catch up to him. He threw himself out of the way of the swipe it aimed for his back. Rolling, he scrambled back to his feet and out of the way of another pounce. He turned around and fired the magnet gun again with a little more power, the ball bearings hitting with the force of a shotgun blast and knocking the monster back two steps.

The recoil threw him off, and he stumbled before artlessly catching himself. “Gah, brace yourself better, Pines!”

Staggering, the monster looked at its stomach, rubbed it to brush out the embedded bearings, and growled with bared canines. Looking at it as he recalled the ball bearings to the magnet gun, Dipper could barely believe it. Eleven feet tall, brown shaggy fur, long lanky arms, an ape-like face–it matched the most common description of Bigfoot, though it was definitely the higher end estimates in size.

“Why does it make me so angry that you’re real?” Dipper asked rhetorically–he already knew why.

He raised the magnet gun, in both hands this time as Bigfoot rose to full height. “All right… I don’t want to have to fight you, but if I have to I will! You are not the biggest, baddest thing I’ve fought against and won.”

Bigfoot slammed its fists down on the ground, hooting and hollering loudly. Narrowing his eyes, Dipper ramped the power of the magnet gun just a little higher. “I’m warning you…!”

Before either could attack, a voice called out. “Now hold on there!”

Dipper, surprised, looked back towards the cave as Bigfoot dropped its arms and looked past him. Both found a shirtless Sheriff Daryl Blubs standing outside the cave, holding his hand over a mass of slime that covered his left side. Adjusting his cracked sunglasses better over his eyes, the middle-aged lawman stared in confusion at his would-be rescuer.

“… Pines? Is that you?” He asked.

Dipper gave a start. “Sheriff… you’re okay?”

Bigfoot let out a guttural sound, seemingly of surprise, as it looked back at Dipper.

Blubs was just as surprised as everyone else apparently. “Well look at you! You’re near tall as Stan now!”

“T-taller,” Dipper corrected, before he remembered the monster he was facing. “Sheriff! Get out of here, I’ll hold off this…” Bigfoot was looking carefully at Dipper now, no bared teeth, no howling or growling. “… Bigfoot.”

“Hold him off?” Blubs seemed aghast at the idea. “Hang on there, city boy. This here sasquatch saved my life!”

Now Dipper was confused as he looked back at Blubs. “Saved your… what?”

“My life! After that other giant ape trashed my cruiser and scared off Edwin, this fella here helped me out. Took me to his home and patched me up good and proper… though I think he may have pulled something out of me in the process.” He patted his side. “I don’t feel any worse for it, though! Heck, I feel better than I have in years.”

Dipper looked from Blubs back to Bigfoot, confused. “Wait… what other giant ape?”

There was a massive impact beside Dipper. Another large creature leaped from the top of a tree it had been clinging to and landed just to his right. He slowly turned and looked up at the dirty, stick and leaf covered ape. It was much shorter than Bigfoot, but had a much bulkier, muscular build. Slamming its fists on the ground twice, making a sound like iron hitting iron, it thumped its chest violently before punching its fists together in challenge.

Dipper was of one thought, as it opened its arms and lunged to bear hug him almost faster than he could realize it was attacking. Almost, Dipper still had plenty of time to realize that he was about to die horribly.

Salvation came at the very last and unlikeliest moment, as Bigfoot–even swifter than when chasing him before–caught the other ape in a flying spear tackle, both crashing to the ground. Stumbling back, he watched in as both apes rolled along the path before the gray ape kicked Bigfoot off him and got back up. He looked over at Blubs.

“What is even going on?!” He shouted before both Bigfoot and the other ape locked hands in a grapple, both quickly trying to shove the other down.

Over the growls and shouts of both apes, Blubs called back. “That gray one, he’s the one that attacked me and Deputy Durland! Carried me off a ways before the sasquatch that saved me attacked it!”

Breaking the grapple, the gray ape punched Bigfoot with a right, the force of the blow staggering him. The bestial left that followed nearly knocked the brown ape off his feet before he recovered and delivered a hammer blow to the gray ape’s chin.

Dipper stared agape at the tremendous force of the blows being exchanged. “No wonder the bearings barely did anything… but why did it save me?”

Blubs shrugged his shoulders. “Guess it thinks we’re friends?”

“Are we?” Dipper asked, a bit affronted.

Blubs adjusted his sunglasses and gave him a flat look over them. “Are we, _city boy?”_

Dipper scowled at him, before shouting out. “Yes!”

Bigfoot’s wild haymaker slammed into the gray ape’s head, and it stumbled back looking even more disheveled but otherwise uninjured. Bigfoot on the other hand was looking worse for wear on its end of the contest, with blood dripping from its nose and mouth.

Okay, Bigfoot was strong, but what was this other ape made out of? Dipper quickly raised the magnet gun, pointing the ball bearings at it. “Time to return the favor!”

With the output even higher he fired, and the bearings scattered off the gray apes side and head with high-pitched metallic pings. Dipper gave a start. “Wait a minute…”

He reversed the pull of the magnet gun, and as the sole pellet that wasn’t flung out of the gun’s influence came back, he was pulled straight towards the gray ape. “Whoa, whoa… it’s a robot!”

He turned off the magnet gun’s polarity right as the gray ape realized Dipper was getting close. It swung at him, but he was just out of reach. When Bigfoot lunged, the gray ape jumped up to the nearest tree, grabbed onto it, and jumped off to deliver a falling hammer blow with its fists. The impact hit like a small bomb, both Dipper and Bigfoot tossed back from it, though Dipper went considerably further.

“Whoa, Pines, you okay?!” Blubs shouted.

His lumberjack hat lying on the ground beside him, Dipper shook his head and looked up. The gray ape was looking down at him, its empty eyes possessing an orange glow.

He searched around, and spotted the magnet gun a few feet away from him. He looked back at the gray ape; it was pounding its chest again.

_“Well, I guess I’m back in the Falls.”_

Rolling over, he sprang to his feet and rushed for the magnet gun.

_“Back with the weirdness, and the danger, and the ever present chance of death.”_

“Look out, Pines it’s comin’!” Blurbs yelled out.

Dipper knew, he could hear the metallic thuds of its hands and feet hitting the ground as it rushed him.

_“Where there’s nothing but mysteries to spend the rest of my life solving.”_

He dove low, snatching the magnet gun up, and turned back at the gray ape. It had reached him, and leaped to arrange its body into a flying drop kick that was probably strong enough to tear him in half. He aimed the weapon, wide-eyed with terror.

_“For all of the two seconds I have left.”_

The blow connected, not with Dipper, but with the crossed arms of Bigfoot as he intervened on the strike, absorbing all of the impact. The sheer force of the strike still caused Dipper to fall backward, as he gazed at the brown ape’s back. Bigfoot saved him again?!

“… Huh…?” He sputtered as the gray ape fell to the ground and scrambled to rise again. To his further amazement, Bigfoot glanced back at him more blood dripping from its mouth and nose.

“… You are, Pine.”

Dipper stared at him. “M-Me? Yeah…”

Bigfoot looked at the gray ape, and whispered. “… Of the Zodiac.”

Dipper’s eyes widened. “What?”

The gray ape leaped again, this time grabbing another tree and leaping off to fall upon Bigfoot. Rather than meet the blow, Bigfoot raised its arms and expertly caught the ape, using its own momentum to send it flying away from it and Dipper. Caught off guard, the gray ape hit the ground over twenty yards away and tumbled along the ground.

The maneuver startled Dipper. Up until now, Bigfoot had been fighting like, well, an ape. That, however, was an actual coordinated counter. Looking from the flung gray ape, he turned back to Bigfoot, who was now staring at him with a much warmer expression.

“Will protect,” Bigfoot said, before it held out to Dipper his Lumberjack hat.

Dipper stared at Bigfoot, uncomprehending for all of an instant, before he realized. “Wait… Weirdmageddon?”

Bigfoot nodded slowly, still regarding him with warmth, and the young man was stunned.

Bigfoot looked from Dipper towards the gray ape and scowled. Realizing that it was up, Dipper turned to face the gray ape. It was radiating a orange-ish glow from its body as it slammed its fists on the ground, building up power for another attack. As Bigfoot growled and prepared to fight, Dipper held out his arm. As he stared at the young man, Dipper put his Lumberjack hat back on, and stepped out in front of Bigfoot.

“It’s okay, I’ve got this.”

The gray ape pounded its fists together, and began galloping towards Dipper and Bigfoot with arms outstretched. In response, Dipper raised up the magnet gun, the single remaining bearing loaded in it. Aiming it at the charging gray ape, Dipper ramped the power of the magnet gun to max and took the weapon in both hands.

“Pines, what the heck are you doin’?!” Blubs shouted as the gray ape quickly closed in.

Dipper raised the weapon just a little higher, and squeezed the trigger.

There was a flash of light and a solid beam of it left the magnet gun, white hot rings of compressed air expanding from the trail end of it. The beam passed right through the shoulder of the gray ape, and its arm and part of its upper torso exploded with tremendous force, the rest of its body flung away from the blast and into the trees. The recoil of the shot shoved Dipper back, but like he warned himself he braced and skidded backward right up against Bigfoot’s front.

His ears were still ringing as he opened his eyes and realized that he wasn’t dead. “Wow, I can’t believe that… no.” He looked at the cooling magnet gun, this wasn’t some jerry-rigged function. That exactly was what it could do in these sorts of situations. “I’m glad it worked.”

He turned and looked up at Bigfoot. “Hey, you okay big guy?”

Bigfoot nodded. “… Fine. Injuries will heal. Always do.”

Dipper was relieved. “So, what was that thing? That was definitely not an animal or humanoid… it was made of metal under that fur.”

“A robit, huh?” Blubs asked as he walked over. “Man, I’m glad I’m retired today.”

Dipper looked over, surprised. “Retiring? Wait, you’re leaving the force?”

Blurbs let out a laugh. “You of all people, one of the one’s I gave the hardest time? You’re sad about it?”

“It’s not that… it’s just…” Dipper sagged. “Is everyone seriously just gone or leaving?”

Blubs looked confused. “Huh? What are you talkin’ about, city boy?”

Dipper stopped himself before he could go into a tirade about it. “Don’t… don’t worry about it. I’m angry that no one was around this morning, but it’s my damage, no one else’s. I can’t expect the Falls to be exactly as I left it.”

He looked towards the direction of the gray ape’s body. “Though some things don’t change at all.”

“Change is painful,” Bigfoot said.

Blubs looked up. “Wait, you can talk? Oh man, that’s… um… heh heh… er…”

Dipper looked between the two of them. “That’s what?”

Blubs quickly spoke up, agitated. “Nevermind all that, boy!”

Bigfoot seemed amused. “Spoke heart. Said kind things. Of people he knows.”

“I told you that in confidence!” Blubs pleaded at Bigfoot.

Dipper snickered a bit, before addressing the Sheriff. “Well, if you’re all right. We can head back now right? I left Mabel over by your cruiser, we can give you a ride back to the Shack. Deputy Durland is waiting.”

“Yeah, I seem to be on the mend now,” Blubs said as Bigfoot confirmed with a nod. “Say, how is your sister? I could always tolerate her better than you.”

Giving him a sharp look, Dipper answered. “She’s fine, in fact-”

The foliage the gray ape had fallen into exploded outward. Dipper, Blubs, and Bigfoot together looked to see the gray ape leap from the trees. The gray fur that covered its body was burned away, revealing heavy armor, circuitry, and artificial skin and muscles exposed by the flame and damage. With one remaining arm, the mechanical ape lumbered straight for them to continue the battle.

“Did I miss?!” Dipper asked as he raised the Magnet Gun… that did not have any ball bearings to use. “Crap…!”

Blubs screamed, and Bigfoot prepared to lunge to meet the damaged robot ape. Before it could reach them, a shadow fell over the gray ape and a massive foot came down upon the robot, crushing it effortlessly under its mass. In spite of the tremendous damage, the robot was merely pinned down and still struggling to scramble out and attack.

Dipper stared at the pinned robot, surprised, before he, Blubs, and Bigfoot looked upward to see the owner of the giant foot. Towering over 65 feet above them, was Mabel, looking down at her foot like she just stepped on dog poop. As Dipper brightened, Blubs’ glasses nearly fell off entirely.

“Mabel!” Dipper shouted.

“She grew up,” Blubs sputtered.

“Hey Dipper!” Mabel called down, her voice deepened by her size. “The Height-Changing Flashlight is AWESOME!” She held it up for emphasis. “I’ve found my new ‘grappling hook!’”

Dipper grinned. “Heh, I am so taking that from you when we get back, Mabel!”

Mabel laughed, whether in defiance or agreement it was hard to tell. as she reached down and picked up the robot ape. Holding it in her hands, she glared at it. “And as for you, time to learn what happens to anyone who messes with my brother.”

As the mechanical ape struggled Mabel aimed towards the west. Winding up, she let out a yell as she pitched the gray ape with all her might. There was an audible crack as the robot left her hand, breaking the sound barrier as it approached the stratosphere.

“Huh, guess the square-cube law can be gotten around if you just make everything stronger,” Dipper observed, regarding Mabel’s incredible feat.

“Girl’s got a heck of an arm,” Blubs said.

“National Classic MVP,” Dipper boasted.

Blubs gaped at him. “Really?!”

Dipper laughed. “Nah, she was a ball girl.”

“Most valuable ball girl!” Mabel called proudly as she pointed the flashlight at herself and shrank down, the flashlight decreasing in size with she was at her daunting 6’6” and the device was at its proper scale. As she returned to normal, she walked up to and smiled at Dipper. “I heard crashes and explosions and so I came running.”

She looked to Sheriff Blubs. “Sheriff Blubs! You’re okay!”

“Sure am,” Blubs replied, “And look at you, Mabel! You’ve grown up into a fine young lady!”

Mabel squealed and cupped her cheeks. “Thank you!” She looked to Bigfoot. “And you! Are you okay…?”

She stopped when she realized that she was staring up at Bigfoot. Bigfoot stared back at her, and raised its hand in a greeting. “Hello, Shooting Star.”

Mabel stared at Bigfoot, for a good long time, and slowly turned her head to stare at Dipper. Dipper, his lips pursed, just as slowly averted his eyes as a manic grin spread across his twin sister’s lips. Both Bigfoot and Blubs shared a confused look, as Dipper continued to turn away, until he laid on the ground and curled up into the fetal position, Mabel looming over him and grinning triumphantly the entire time.

**@@@@@**

Dipper, Mabel, and the Sheriff reached the Mystery Cart, with Bigfoot in tow. As Blubs sat down in the back and the twins climbed into the front, the great brown ape examined the machine with interest as Dipper started it. “No foul smell, no fire, no buzz.”

Dipper looked down at it. “Don’t ask me how it works, my Great Uncle messed with it and now I don’t know what powers it.”

“Boundless optimism!” Mabel suggested.

Blubs chuckled. “It’ll never run out of juice with you around.”

Mabel beamed. “I know, right?”

Bigfoot stood up, and a gruff sound not-unlike a laugh left his lips. “You Children of the Sun are cleverer still.”

Dipper looked up at him. “Huh?”

“What my kind used to call you,” Bigfoot said, “A very long time ago.”

Mabel leaned over Dipper. “Your kind, so there’s more of you? Is there a secret society of Bigfeet? Do you have a secret advanced civilization that exists just out of sight of our own?!”

Bigfoot fell silent for a moment, before answering slowly. “Another time, I will answer those questions for you.”

Mabel immediately backed up, there was _tension_ there. “Um… okay!”

“Have you really been hiding here this whole time, under our noses?” Dipper asked.

“No, moved here, when I could feel the demon clawing at my dreams no more.”

Dipper and Mabel looked at each other, before Dipper asked one more question. “What did you do to Sheriff Blubs. He said you took something from him.”

“Something I could use, and he did not need. It benefits us both… my mind… my thoughts… they have never been so clear. Thank you,” Bigfoot answered.

Blubs looked down at himself. “Huh, I had my appendix out back when I was thirteen. What else could he have grabbed?”

“Well, you’re welcome,” Dipper said with a nod, “My sister and I just moved up here. If you want to come by and say hello… be sure to come anytime during the evening or night.

“Thank you,” Bigfoot said with another short nod. “Goodbye. Take care of your friend.”

“Thank you for helping out,” Dipper said to Bigfoot in turn, before the brown ape turned and walked off towards the forest. Starting up the Mystery Cart, Dipper began towards the Shack, and looked at Blubs and Mabel.

“Well… Bigfoot’s real,” he admitted.

“I told you,” Mabel said.

“And it did some kind of weird surgery on you,” he said to Blubs.

“Telling you, I feel fine,” Blubs insisted.

“And we fought a killer robot ape that can survive a railgun shot to the chest and needed to be thrown into space,” Dipper finished.

“You’re welcome,” Mabel chimed.

Dipper smiled. “Our first day back and we had the wildest adventure since we went to LA.”

And as per such adventures, he already wanted to lie down and die from the running, jumping, and fighting he’d done. Even though he was still a teenager, the overexertion hurt. “Man, I think I can spend the rest of the day sitting back and writing all this stuff down. There’s so much to solve. Bigfoot, his history-”

“The people who are after him,” Sheriff Blubs cut in.

“Yeah, the people who are-” Dipper’s thoughts ground to a halt. “… The people after him. Who… have robot bigfoots-”

“Bigfeet,” Mabel corrected.

“That can take him on in a fight,” he finished. “I hate everything we just discussed.”

Still, no robot apes were crashing down to rain on their parade, so there was that much to not worry about. As he looked upwards over the straight path ahead, he wondered what Grunkle Ford would do in this situation. “Well, if we have to deal with those guys, we’ll need to get Grunkle Ford’s lab up and running, and to maybe keep an eye out for people who could be watching us.”

Mabel brightened. “Yeah, and we’ll do it together!”

“Right, together,” Dipper said before looking skyward again.

High above, the unmanned air vehicle looked back down at him. The image was much clearer now, but static and interference still messed with what was beamed down to a place far away. In a well-lit and air conditioned control van, the pilot of the drone stared at Dipper’s face as he looked unknowingly into the camera of the surveillance aircraft.

The drone operator, wearing a plain white shirt and black tie with black slacks, looked to another suited man, who wore a black suit. “Sir, I have the target in my sights. The three of them are leaving the containment zone.”

The man, with short cropped brown hair slicked forward with hair gel, adjusted the American flag pin on the lapel of his suit, and folded his arms. “They were able to take down a Silverback with their anomalous toys, dang. That’s going to cost us a lot of money.”

“Sir, should I… vector in a team to apprehend them?” The drone pilot asked.

Before he could answer, the door opened and a rush of hot, high desert air began to pour in. The man in the suit looked towards the door, as two people stepped out of the sun. An older man dressed in the same suit, but bearded with a mustache and next to no hair on his head, and red-haired woman dressed paradoxically in a bulky black winter coat.

“H-hey, Agent Powers! You’re letting the cold air out!” The first suit complained.

Agent Powers glanced back to the woman, who shrugged her shoulders and let the door swing closed. He turned to the younger agent. “Agent Trigger, I hope you have a reason for calling me all the way from my lunch.”

Agent Trigger quickly nodded and looked to the monitor. “Well, we’ve got a followup to the incident from last night, and it’s…”

Powers was unamused. It was literally his default, he was born without a sense of humor. “The people attacked by the Silverback inside the containment zone? What about it?”

“Well, locals from town came to search the area for the missing person, and they encountered SCP-1000,” Trigger revealed.

Powers became concerned. “Did you send the Silverback to intercept.”

“Yes, but-”

He was overridden, as Powers relaxed and brushed it off. “Well, then. Have the Silverback dispose of the bodies and return SCP-1000 to its cave so it can regenerate.”

Trigger, and the drone pilot looked pensive. Powers didn’t like pensive. “What?”

“The Silverback was destroyed in combat,” Trigger nervously reported.

Agent Powers may have been born with no sense of humor, but he did have a sense of surprise. “It was… what?!”

The woman back by the door reacted with surprise as well, though it was less disbelief and more intrigue.

Trigger looked at the screen, and Powers stepped up to look at it. “Two individuals entered the containment zone and were detected by our drone. I had ordered the Silverback to intercept and called you, but by the time you got here it was gone.”

Powers stared at the image of Dipper and Mabel, and reached up to stroke his beard. The ghost of a memory haunted the back of his mind–there was something familiar about them, but he could not put his finger on it.

“Agent Powers,” Trigger said, “Mobile Task Force Zeta-1000 has units that can intercept, should I order them to before they get too far from containment?”

Leaning back from the screen, Powers brushed his moustache with a finger. “Are they hostile or a danger to others?”

“No, they were there solely to recover the first individual who was taken by SCP-1000, and appear to have been successful.”

That was enough. “MTF Zeta-1000 is to not engage unless danger to civilian life is imminent. Designate them Persons of Interest and begin round the clock surveillance.”

Trigger was baffled. “Sir, these Persons of Interest could be an imminent danger now.”

“And I say they’re only an imminent danger to anyone we send after them,” Powers insisted. “Instead, we’re going to find out everything we can on those two and whatever anomalous abilities or equipment that allowed them to take down a _Counter Xenomorph_ _unit in_ _straight combat.”_

Agent Trigger quickly acquiesced. “Understood.”

Powers nodded and turned towards the woman. “I’m very sorry, ma’am. It would appear the equipment was destroyed.”

The woman only smiled. “No need to apologize to us. After all, it was our equipment you purchased. It was not up for what you subjected it too, which means we will have to assess what went wrong.” Her gray eyes darted towards the screen, and the image of the Pines twins driving into thicker foliage and falling out of sight. “I look forward to learning more about these… Persons of Interest.” 

**|End of the Road|**

It was not too far past noon when the Mystery Cart came back to the Shack. The parking lot that had been packed with cars was virtually empty now, warded off by a big “Closed” sign hanging from the side of the Shack. That was a relief to Dipper as they pulled up to the side of the house and climbed out.

“Thank goodness Paz cleared this place out,” he said as they headed towards the front patio of the Shack. “We’ve got a lot to talk about and having a lot of people around is just going to make it awkward.”

“Yeah!” Mabel agreed, before she looked at the porch and gasped. Dipper looked, and was surprised to see a young woman wearing a large sweater decorated with horizontal stripes of alternating shades of green and a blue skirt. She was sitting on the porch by the door sitting on a chair with a laptop on her lap. The young Asian woman was looking back at them, USB cables connecting to the hipster-style glasses she wore to her laptop.

“Dipper, Mabel, hello,” Candy Chiu greeted in a reserved but friendly fashion. She noticed Sheriff Blubs was with them. “Oh, you rescued the Sheriff, that’s good.”

“CANDY!” Mabel erupted before she ran over and wrapped up her sworn sister for life in a big hug. “Oh my gosh! You’re outside! In daylight!”

Candy returned the hug. “Mabel, it is so good to see you. I’m sorry I missed you when you got here.” She pulled back. “I was doing… calibrations.”

“It’s okay, you’re here! I’m here! Everyone’s here!” Mabel said loudly, before lowering the volume a bit. “Oh man, I can’t wait to tell you everything!”

Candy nodded, and got up as she closed her laptop. “Please, it will be better than what’s going on in there.”

Dipper walked up, and he couldn’t help but linger his gaze on Candy a bit. Like Pacifica, she’d grown up well. Still on the small side, but she’d grown into a lovely young woman–and contrary to her tween aspirations she’d traded her cyborg augmentation desires for simpler electronics. “What’s going on?”

Candy nudged the door to the Shack open. “Experience it for yourself.”

The door nearly came off its hinges as an avalanche of shouting rushed out, catching Dipper and even Mabel off guard.

“The Patterson film! The Patterson film! You keep going on about the biggest _hoax_ on top of the pile!” An impassioned Pacifica yelled. “That garbage has been like, debunked again and again!”

Durland fired back. “Scientific analysis backs it!”

“Oh yes, shaky and blurry images. That’s legitimate! They examined the film in 1999 and they identified the suit’s zipper and belt fasteners in the frames they could get a clear look in!”

“No human can walk like that!” Durland argued.

“No walking looks normal at sixteen frames per second!”

Dipper and Mabel looked at Candy. She blew out a sigh. “They have been at this all morning; that’s why we closed.”

“All right, let’s break it up,” Dipper said as he walked in.

“It’s a big forest, with a lot of weird things in it!” Durland noted with certainty.

“Of course there is, I’ve seen it! You know what I haven’t seen? Bigfoot!” Pacifica shouted back.

The kitchen was a mess, papers and books on the subject for and against Bigfoot were piled everywhere, competing tackboards with pages of evidence pinned to each and connected with different colored lines of thread stood behind both Pacifica and Durland as they waved various pictures and books at each other in their arguing.

“You ain’t been lookin’ hard enough, not when you’re runnin’ a shrine full of hoaxes!” Durland accused.

“Not even Dipper’s seen a Bigfoot and he’s the biggest true-believer I know!” Pacifica added forcefully.

Dipper chose this moment to interrupt. “Guys, Bigfoot’s real and he saved Sheriff Blubs from a killer robot ape.”

Durland looked elated. “I’m right–I mean, the Sheriff’s all right?”

Pacifica whirled upon Dipper, furious. “Dipper Pines, you jerk!” She stopped when she saw he was roughed up. “Oh gosh, what happened–wait, there was a robot?”

“A killer robot ape,” Dipper replied.

Mabel leaned in. “I threw it into space!”

“Upper atmosphere, tops,” Dipper corrected.

Pacifica, who could accept a lot after the last summer they were here, nodded. “Gotcha. Well, come in and get cleaned up. I’ll order lunch.”

Mabel was impressed. “But you’ve just been proven wrong at something, Pacifica!”

Pacifica looked towards where Durland had been, but found that he was in the living room hugging Blubs in relief. “I can live with being wrong once or twice in my life.” She looked pointedly at Dipper. “Especially if I don’t have to suffer alone.”

Dipper tensed up and looked back at Mabel–she was grinning again. Her triumphant smile vanished when Pacifica got around her and pushed her to Dipper. “All right you two, get cleaned up. You smell like sweat, fear, and hairy ape. I’ll have this mess cleaned up by the time you get back down here.”

“That’s what Dipper smells like all the time, though!” Mabel argued as they were ushered off.

“Mabel!” Dipper snapped at her.

“Nice as it is, it’s _totally_ _distracting,”_ Pacifica said as she shoved them out to the stairs. “Now get!”

“Wait, what?” Dipper said before the kitchen door closed behind them.

Smiling as she listened for footsteps up the stairs, Pacifica turned and walked over to Blubs and Durland–who were ecstatic to see one another again.

“Sheriff, I’m so happy you’re all right,” Durland said, “I’m liable to start tearin’ up.”

“Partner, you know it’s all right to let it out. I’m just glad I get another chance to see my best friend one more time,” Blubs replied.

“And many more times after that,” Durland agreed.

Adorable as it was, this was Paz’s ship and when she ran it, she ran it tight. “All right, May-December. I’m glad you’re alive and all, but there’s a mess in this kitchen I want cleaned up.” She looked towards the door, where Candy was peering in. “You too, Candroid. We’ve got a half-hour tops to get this place ready!”

“Understood,” Candy answered.

**@@@@@**

“You know,” Mabel said as they walked up the steps to the attic of the Shack. “It’s kind of strange how this place is so much bigger on the inside than it looks outside.”

“I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed,” Dipper said. “But hey, Grunkle Ford was the one who worked on it, so I just assume he did it.”

“Yeah, but what if he _didn’t?”_ Mabel asked in a mock spooky voice.

Dipper reached the door to what was, a long time ago, their old room. “Then it’s something to ask him next time he and Grunkle Stan come back to town.” Opening it, he stepped into what was now largely empty, except for a pair of beds on either side of the wall, a coffin that doubled as a TV stand, and two closets–one by the exit and another in the alcove near the triangle-shaped window.

“Aw, Paz took out the video games,” Mabel lamented. “Oh but hey! Someone put in some bigger beds.”

“Knowing her, they’re probably in the gift shop to get some kind of profit out of them,” Dipper said as he walked over to the middle of the room. Someone, likely Candy given that Pacifica was busy for most of the morning, had moved most of their bags from their car here.

“Good thing we brought a TV with us, and some games,” he said as he knelt down and opened a suitcase to pull out a fresh change of clothes. Mabel walked past him, taking a seat on the bed where his used to be. “Hey, you want to take a shower first or should I?”

“Hey, Dipper?” Mabel asked.

He looked over at her. “Yeah, what?”

Mabel patted on the bed, beckoning for him to sit with her. He looked at her hand, and then at her face. “Mabel…”

She patted more insistently, and with a sigh he relented. Setting his clothes down on his other side, he sat down next to Mabel and she immediately pulled him against her in a tight hug. It wasn’t comically tight, or her friendly tackle hugs without the tackle that still knocked the air out of him, and it certainly wasn’t an awkward sibling hug. It was a full-bodied embrace, pulling him tight against her as she rested her head against his chest.

Trapped by her hug, Dipper sighed and returned the hug, resting his chin on top of her head. She nuzzled him, before she spoke softly. “You must be tired, huh? Between last night and today.”

He went through a lot of adrenaline in the last twelve hours. Forgoing the shower and lunch was a really attractive right now. Sometimes it just felt right to be this tired.

“If I lie down now, I’m not getting up for like… three hours at least,” Dipper lamented.

Mabel kept nuzzling him. “I know that feel. I just wanna pass out… right here, where it’s comfy and safe.”

That sounded good, really good. As he rubbed Mabel’s back, she rested her weight against him until he was lying on his, with her head resting on his heart. As he closed his eyes to let out a sigh, he could feel Mabel get even comfier, draping a leg over him.

He opened his eyes, staring at the sharply angled ceiling of the Shack’s A-Frame roof. “I’m sorry for why I ran off earlier.” He wasn’t sorry that he did, not with everything that came of it.

“Yeah, I know,” Mabel whispered back.

“When we left… there were just… so many strong connections with so many people,” he said. “The Stans, Soos, Melody, Wendy, Paz… the McGuckets. Grenda and Candy…” He looked down at her. “All those bonds we made were so strong. So I was really angry and sad that we were blown off. I really wanted to see everyone today, pick up right where we left off four years ago, but… thinking about it? It’s a good thing we didn’t.”

“You mean besides the fact that we wouldn’t have saved Sheriff Blubs if we had?” Mabel asked.

“Yeah,” Dipper clarified. “Gravity Falls isn’t some vacation spot to spend our summers. It’s not this place we can run away to in order to get away from the real world. This town, all the people in it, the people we know, the strange things we’ve already gotten ourselves up to our necks in? They are ourl world now, we’ll have plenty of time to reconnect with everyone.”

Mabel smiled. “That’s the spirit.”

Dipper patted Mabel atop her head. “I’m glad you were there to be better about this than I was.”

Her smile became a smirk. “That’s because I just know better.”

“About some things,” Dipper was quick to cut in.

Mabel sat up and gave her brother a smug look. “Yeah, like Bigfoot!”

Dipper pursed his lips and looked away from her, pitching his sister into a snorting and giggling fit. “Hehehehe… yes, yes! Show me your shame, Dipper Pines, for from you I have claimed your immortal soul and it is mine to do with as I please~”

“Yeah, yeah… what do you want?” Dipper asked.

“A favor is only good when I need it,” Mabel answered. “So I’ll hold onto it until then. It shouldn’t be for very long.”

Dipper snorted roughly and pulled Mabel down to mess up her hair. “Just remember that they’re not transferable and cannot be exchanged for any other goods and prizes.”

Mabel snickered, and looked up at him. “Are you still gonna jump in the shower?”

“Nah, as long as I’m distracting Paz?” He said with some of his own smugness. “She can enjoy sweat, fear, and hairy ape for a little bit longer.”

“Good,” Mabel turned and rubbed her face against his chest. “Because I like it too.”

Dipper chuckled, before Mabel sat up again, this time straddling him as she looked down at his face. “What are you gonna do about that, anyway?”

“What… about Paz?” Dipper folded his hands behind the back of his head and hummed with a smile on his face. “I know we just got back, but I’m gonna talk to her, see what happens, you know? She’s… changed so much.”

“I know, would you ever imagine Pacifica of all people working at the Shack?”

“Not just working,” Dipper said, “But putting herself out there like she is. The Pacifica we last saw at the end of the Summer of ‘12 wouldn’t dream of doing anything like this.”

Mabel giggled and snorted. “Well, I give you my blessing! You don’t break her heart now, got it Dipper?”

Dipper’s eyebrows rose. “Are you sure?”

Mabel chuckled in her throat and rocked back and forth on his lap. “I’m sure. This is Pacifica we’re talking about, if there are any girls I’d be cool with you dating? The list goes her, Candy, and Wendy.”

“Not Grenda?”

“Please, you’re not _man enough_ for Grenda,” Mabel teased as she reached for his upper arms and grabbed his biceps to squeeze them. “I mean, look at these lean muscles~”

Dipper fake-struggled against Mabel as she giggled and held him down more firmly, before she finally yielded the struggle and let him roll her off him. She flopped on her back and stared up at the ceiling.

Dipper turned his head and watched her as she relaxed into the bed. She closed her eyes, still smiling, as she asked. “Just make even a little time for me, will ya?”

“You don’t have to ask for that, ever,” Dipper said as he took her hand and held it.

They both laid there in silence, before the long day caught up with them and they drifted to sleep. The nap lasted all of an hour or so, before the bell that hung in their bedroom and was used by Grunkle Stan to alert them from downstairs rang.

As they sat up and looked at it, Pacifica called up through the floor. “Okay, place is cleaned up and the food’s here. C’mon down, you two!”

Mabel sprang to her feet, excited. “Yay, it’s time!”

Dipper was a little slower. “Where did she order from?”

“Who cares? Let’s sit down and have lunch with everybody!” Mabel said as she hurried out the bedroom and down the stairs.

Letting out a short sigh, Dipper followed. As he entered the kitchen, he found no lunch waiting at the table, though. Instead, sitting there was a tall and overweight man wearing a black suit not unlike his Grunkle Stan. Dipper’s mouth fell open as he stared at the man, who looked right back over at him and waved.

“Hey dude, heard you got to fight Bigfoot,” Soos Ramirez, the owner of the Mystery Shack, said.

“Soos? What are you doing here…?” Dipper asked.

“I didn’t even think they were around these parts. I always thought they hung out on the coast,” Soos said as he got up.

A blonde-haired young woman wearing a lavender maternity dress stepped up beside him. “Hey Dipper!”

“Melody, too?” Dipper didn’t understand. “But Paz said you were out of town.”

“Well we’re obviously not,” Melody said before she looked Dipper over in amazement. “Look at how big you’ve gotten! You’re even taller than Soos!”

“Yeah man. Puberty hit you like a truck.” The young man who called him out was still as skinny and lanky as Dipper remembered him, but there was a little more color to his once pale features, and instead of an oversized hoodie, he wore a nice white dress shirt and black vest with blue jeans. The wide brimmed undertaker’s hat was a new addition, too.

“At least you came out from under it okay,” Robbie Valentino added with a self-deprecating smirk. “I’m still breaking out.”

“Robbie, dude!” Dipper said excitedly. “What the heck is going on…?”

Mabel stepped in from the living room, joined by a smiling Candy and Pacifica. “Uh, what do you think it is?”

A statuesque woman, built like an Amazon and bearing the looks of an ugly duckling that matured into an elegant swan, emerged from behind them and caught all three young women in a bear hug, lifting them off the ground. In a deep, rough voice, she announced. “It’s a surprise party, duh!”

“Grenda, but… Austria!” Dipper said in disbelief.

“C’mon, Pines. I wouldn’t miss a chance to be with my girls for the world,” Grenda Grendinator said before hooking a thumb to herself. “I flew a fighter jet to get here from Europe!”

“I literally buried six people in a single day to make sure today was clear,” Robbie said. “I’m pretty sure at least one of them was still alive…”

Soos got up and walked over to slap Dipper on the back. “Yeah, dude. Did you think none of us would actually be around for the day you two came back to stay?” She asked.

Pacifica squirmed free of Grenda’s hug. “Like seriously, I didn’t expect you to run off and save Sheriff Blubs–or have to pretend to argue for hours about Bigfoot in case we needed to stall–but we all planned this big surprise thing for you.”

“I knew it!” Mabel cheered. “Haha, years of situation comedies and cartoons 1. California Board of Education 0!”

Candy looked to her. “Thank you for not spoiling the easily detectable surprise.”

Mabel snapped into a salute. “Glad to, Dipper needed this more than anyone.”

Dipper did need it, tears were welling up in his eyes as other residents of Gravity Falls began to show up, bringing food, snacks, and gifts to welcome the twins back. “Jeez, you guys.”

“Even though it didn’t go quite like it planned, you still saved the day, dude,” Soos said as he put an arm around Dipper’s shoulders.

Melody and Pacifica both looked towards the living room, where Blubs was already retelling the harrowing adventure to anyone who wanted to hear it. “Today would’ve been so different if it weren’t for you and Mabel.”

Dipper wiped his tears. “Yeah, I know. I’m just a little overwhelmed… I’m so happy to see all of you again. Well, almost everyone.” He looked to Soos and Pacifica. “Any word from the Stans?”

“Not since the last letter, dude,” Soos said, and Dipper’s smile dimmed a little.

“Oh,” he said quietly. “What about Wendy… is she coming?”

Pacifica shook her head. “Stuck at OSU, but she said she’d be coming back as soon as she was done with her finals.”

She pulled a letter from the impressive cleavage afforded to her by her Mistress Mystery attire. “Also, Ford did want me to give you this the second you got here. He said it was a surprise for you alone.”

Dipper brightened and took the old, heavy envelope. Mabel joined his side and both twins looked at it. Sure enough, the letter was from the illustrious Stanford Pines, but it was also labeled for Dipper’s eyes only.

“Cool,” Dipper said as he weighed the envelope in his hand. “I’ll check it out later then.”

Mabel pouted. “Aw man, Grunkle Ford didn’t leave me anything cool.”

“Mabel, you got to be a 65 foot tall giant and throw a robot monkey into the edge of space. I think Grunkle Ford was looking out for you,” Dipper said.

Grenda was interested. “Hey, you’re gonna show us, right May-May?”

Mabel rolled her eyes. “I don’t know… this is a terrible power that I should treat responsibly…” Her gaze fell upon Dipper, and her eyes pleading.

With a sigh, Dipper nodded. “Fine, but don’t step on anyone!”

“Promise!” Mabel said as she rushed for the door, Candy and Grenda quickly following.

“What should we make grow first?” Candy asked.

“How about you?” Grenda suggested.

“Then she can be as tall as us!” Mabel agreed.

“… Yesssss…” Candy’s trailing hiss was cut off by the front door shutting behind them.

Dipper laughed. “Man, that’s gonna get weird.”

“Yeah, they’re all wearing skirts too, if that gets outta hand we’re gonna have to bring all the kids inside,” Soos pointed out.

“Or start taking pictures,” Melody suggested, “GTS doesn’t just stand for Global Trade System, after all.”

“Whoa, weird,” Dipper said.

Pacifica on the other hand, saw dollar signs. “Now, now, let’s not be too hasty to condemn some possibly profitable paraphilias.”

Dipper laughed. It was only his first day home, and he’d gone from meeting bigfoot to discussing the profit potential of giant women with some of his closest friends as half the town came to welcome him and Mabel back home. The first day, with no end in sight for a long time–or so he hoped. Once he could only imagine where the mysteries of the town would take him, now… he was sure he couldn’t do that. This was only day one of the rest of his life, the adventures to follow could only get better from here. 

**|The Real Folk Blues|**

At the Gravity Falls Sheriff’s office, it was–as usual–peaceful and quiet. With Sheriff Blubs’ retirement party going down at the Mystery Shack, focus was left to welcome the newly appointed Sheriff to the town. One deputy in particular, Steve Jung, lamented the end of an era as he snacked on a slice of cantaloupe. Like Durland, Steve was a skinnier guy, but not nearly as tall, wore a smokey hat over his high and tight haircut and a pair of aviators to hide his eyes.

“New Sheriff is from the coast, Tillamook,” he said to his fellow deputy, Barbara Freud.

Barbara was as pear-shaped woman, strong but curvy, and shared Steve’s deceptive no-nonsense look with smokey hat, aviators, but her hair was tied up in a tight brown bun just below the back of her hat. “Been hearing they’ve had problems–lots of _teenager_ related trouble the Sheriff took care of single-handed like.”

“Just in time, too. The Pines kids are here to stay, and there’s no tellin’ what they’re going to dig up.” Steve took a big bite off his cantaloupe and hummed. “Mm, mm! It’s almost better sliced.”

“Oh don’t go on about that again, you were in the ICU for two weeks,” Barbara said. “I can’t wait to see what they did. All these teenagers running around like they know what’s going on need the respect of the law put into ‘em.”

“Amen,” Steve agreed–both officers missing the irony of disparaging the lawless when they were in a position to enforce the law themselves. Outside, a police cruiser pulled up, and the sound of the door opening and slapping shut made both deputies jump.

Steve grinned. “All right, the new Sheriff’s already here! On your feet Deputy Freud!”

Barbara stood up, and made a look of mild disgust as Steve stuffed another slice of cantaloupe in his mouth just before the doors opened.Both deputies looked to greet the new Sheriff–and stopped.

They knew that Penelope Laski was a younger woman who had proven herself effective at breaking up a lengthy crime wave in Tillamook County. What they didn’t expect was that the woman standing just inside the threshold was a woman in her mid twenties, dressed like a sheriff complete with the smokey hat of authority… but the look ended there. She was a drop dead _gorgeous_ young woman with the dazzlingly fresh face of an Instagram model who laughed at the idea of needing filters, with bright neon blue hair, that matched her eyes and the lipstick she also wore. Her accessories, including the pistol on her hip, came in slightly darker shades of blue.

The first thought Barbara thought was that this woman was an anime character. The first thought Steve had, was that a Portland anarchist stole the real Sheriff's uniform and was trying to infiltrate the Gravity Falls Police Department.

“Good afternoon,” she said after she took a sip from the blue travel mug she brought in with her. “I’m the new sheriff, Penelope Laski.”

Both burst into laughter, Barbara turning her head to look away from Sheriff Laski while Steve pointed at her whole guffawing at near the top of his lungs.

“What did you do to your hair, city girl?!” He bellowed before devolving into more laughter.

Sheriff Laski brought her travel mug to her lips, and took a long, calming draw from it. She let her two deputies laugh themselves silly, Barbara’s ability to contain or divert it crumbling as Steve laughed harder. It took them almost a minute to finally calm down.

“Ha… hahaha…” Steve chuckled. “… Seriously, what the heck is up with that hair? You some kind of furry otherkin or something? Hahahaha…”

“She looks like she does her shopping at Hot Topic,” Barbara pointed out.

“Right, hahahaha…” Steve chuckled.

Laski lowered the travel mug from her lips, and walked up to the two of them. Calmly, she answered him. “Deputy Jung, I can’t help the hair I was born with, anymore than you can help that extra chromosome.”

Both stopped, and stared at the woman, whose blue-eyed gaze was _intensely withering,_ burning clean through them like the sun was shining through her retinas.

“Uh…” Steve said, before Sheriff Laski stepped closer to them. Both deputies recoiled, standing ramrod straight at attention. She looked back and forth between them.

“Let me dispel one thing before I start: I am not here because of some great accomplishment, and I’m resting on my laurels in a quiet, sleepy town like this. I’m here because certain influential parties in this state have felt that the law shouldn’t be an inconvenience to them, but I am too otherwise _clean_ to get rid of because it wouldn’t go over with the sheep herd. As a result, I am coming here from a _very_ bad place, and I’m going to be taking it out on _both of you_ and you just got rid of any shred of guilt I’d have about it.” She looked back and forth between them. “Have I made myself clear? That right off the bat I hate you, and will hate you until you are gone from my sight or something that isn’t worth my disgust and contempt?”

Both nodded quickly, and Sheriff Laski nodded. “Good. Let’s get to work, I want a list of all persons of interest in this town. Especially those with criminal records. I want to know exactly what kind of freaks I’m dealing with.”

She walked passed them towards her office. “If you do a good enough job, I might give you a chance to greet me again, idiots.”

Steve and Barbara looked at each other, the deputies quietly swallowed their fear as the door closed behind the new Sheriff of Gravity Falls.

* * *

A/N Thank you for reading, folks!

 


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